DENVER – It was a senior sweep for Sara Rask.
 
The University of Denver skier put together one of the most dominant performances in recent history on the women's alpine collegiate circuit during the 2025 season—winning all seven slalom events and both alpine races at the NCAA Championships in March in New Hampshire.
 
Rask completed the season sweep in slalom on March 5 at Dartmouth Skyway and did it in comeback fashion after being in second place following run 1. She trailed Colby College's Carrissa Cassidy in the initial descent but posted a second-run time that was six-tenths of a second faster than Cassidy to earn her first career national title.
 
"It felt a little bit surreal," Rask said following the slalom win. "I was just surrounded by friends and was celebrating with everyone. It was just amazing. I have been dreaming about this since I started at DU, and it was so cool to finally make it happen."
 
The 2025 RMISA Women's Alpine Most Valuable Skier in slalom, Rask won her first NCAA Regional/RMISA Championship in the discipline less than weeks week earlier in Alaska, going along with her slalom victories in both RMISA Alpine Qualifier and Denver Invitational on the home hill at Loveland Ski Area, Montana State Invitational at Bridger Bowl, Utah Invite at Olympic Park and the Alaska Anchorage Invitational at Alyeska Resort.
 
Overall, nine of Rask's 15 career victories have come in the more technical of alpine events.
 
"Before the season, I obviously wanted to win as much as I can. It wasn't something that I put out to win all of the races in slalom, but it just kept building as I had good momentum," Rask said of her slalom sweep. "I took it one race at a time, and I'm glad that I forgot about that at the start of the second run in the slalom. I was just thinking of the [next run] and not any stats."
 
Playing with house money with one individual national title already locked up, Rask went all out in her final race in giant slalom on March 7. Again, the Stockholm, Sweden, native was second after the opening run but put together the fastest run 2 time and received a bit of luck when leader and defending national champion Magdalena Luczak wasn't able to finish her second descent after crashing halfway down the course.
 
"It was probably the best snow we've skied on this year," Rask recalled of the GS day. "There was a lot of wind, so you had to stay aerodynamic and chase it a lot."
 
After racing in rain on the slalom course two days earlier, the athletes faced the elements again with high winds during the giant slalom. The conditions were so blustery that the organizers disconnected the bottom backets of the gate flags to avoid them becoming sails during the race.
 
In the end, the wind might have played to Rask's benefit as she picked up her sixth career giant slalom win and first since the 2024 RMISA Alpine Qualifer in Montana, as she says, "I like the wind because you have to stay low, and I know how to stay low."
 
Rask completed 2025 with a career-best eight victories and placed in the top five in 10-of-14 races. In fact, she was one of the most consistent skiers in her time as a Pioneer with 38 top-10 finishes and only one DNF in 41 career races.
 
"We saw the Sara that we've seen a lot," said Joonas Rasanen, Denver's Otto Tschudi Alpine Skiing Head Coach, of the senior's season. "She had that spicy-tuna mentality that she's had a lot in slalom all year. For her to go seven-for-seven in this year's college slalom races is incredible, and we couldn't be more proud of her. For her to come out and make it happen at the championships is amazing. We're super happy for her to end her college career on a high note. It's incredible, and for her to do it in GS—her second run was really good once she came off the pitch. She's obviously special, and she has changed our program."
 
Rask now owns the 97th and 98th individual national titles in DU skiing history and the first since current U.S. Ski Team member and Beijing Olympian Katie Hensien won slalom as a senior in 2022. It was also the first NCAA women's giant slalom victory by a Pioneer since 2020 by Storm Klomhaus, a member of the U.S. Ski Team as well.
 
The Denver Swede also continued the current stretch of women's alpine skiers to sweep the NCAAs, as Utah's Madison Hoffman did it in 2023 and CU's Luczak in 2024. Overall, Rask is just the third women's skier in Pioneer history to finish on the top step of the National Championship podium in both events, joining Kristine Haugen in 2013 and Amelia Smart in 2018.
 
Rask's victory also gets her added alongside the other great DU skiers in history. Every student-athlete that has won an alpine national championship is featured on the wall in the alpine coaches' office, and Rask has been eying that wall ever since she first stepped on campus as a freshman in 2022.
 
Her goal was to win a national title at DU, and she was close to doing that the previous two years, claiming two podiums and three top-five finishes at the 2023 and 2024 national championships. That mission was finally accomplished this winter.
 
Rask's time at Denver includes six All-American awards—five of which were on the First Team—three All-RMISA First-Team honors, four RMISA Most Valuable Skier accolades, two individual national titles and now her name and picture next to the other great Pioneers to have gone through the program.
 
"I get to be on the coaches' wall," said Rask," which I'm very excited about… This is something that I've wanted to do since I came here. It just feels so right to end it like this."
 

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