SALT LAKE CITY – Utah freshman skier Julia Richter has been named the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association Female Nordic Athlete of the Year while first-year head alpine coach JJ Johnson has been selected as the Alpine Coach of the Year, the league announced today.
 
Athlete and Coach of the Year awards are voted on by the league membership.
 
Richter won the women's 5-km freestyle NCAA title and finished second in the 15-km classic to earn first-team All-America honors in both events. She led all women's Nordic skiers in individual points at the championships. Richter surged at the end of the year, finishing first or second in the final six races of the season with three victories. She did not finish lower than fourth over the final eight races of the season.
 
"This is a well-deserved honor for Julia," head Nordic coach Miles Havlick said. "Throughout fall training, Julia impressed with her focus and work ethic. She got a little sick after traveling home for the winter holiday and struggled to get healthy for the first few race weekends. When she finally did, she was hungry to compete and brought her A-game to every race. In the final six races of the season, she didn't finish out of the top two bringing home both an RMISA and NCAA title in her freshman year. I think her success can be attributed to our strong women's team pushing each other throughout the year and feeding off of one another's successes. Huge congrats to Julia for this award and I have a feeling more accolades will be coming her way in the future!"
 
Johnson is in his first season at Utah after joining the Utes from the U.S. Ski Team. He coached three skiers to All-America honors led by Roni Remme, who finished second at NCAA's in both the women's giant slalom and slalom, in addition to Eirin Engeset (women's GS) and Mark Engel (men's slalom). Utah had the top scoring team in the women's giant slalom at NCAA's. The Utes were the top scoring alpine team at both the RMISA Championship and UAA Invite while the men's alpine scores led the discipline at the RMISA Championships, UAA Invite and Colorado Invite.
 
"It was awesome to have JJ as a coach this year, especially since I had him as a coach on the U.S. Ski Team," men's alpine skier Addison Dvoracek said. "It was really great to have a good relationship with him coming into this year and so I knew what to expect in his coaching style and what he would expect from me as an athlete. He did a great job of keeping the energy positive and created a fun environment while recognizing what needed to be done in order to get the results we wanted. I knew it would be a challenge and probably stressful for him coming into the college scene with having to deal with all the NCAA rules and handling a much larger group than he had been used to, but he worked hard to stay on top of everything and really did a great job as a first-year coach in this program. I was very pleased with his role this year."
 
Utah won the 2019 NCAA Championship.