After the Carleton Ravens Nordic ski team arrived in Canmore, Alta. March 11 for the Canadian College and University Nordic Championships (CCUNCs), they proceeded to trounce their competitors in an array of races.

They left the week-long championships with a men’s national title, as well as a handful of gold, silver and bronze medals.

But funding for the team to compete at nationals is limited, and head coach Chris Mamen said it is preventing his squad from being consistently successful at the CCUNCs.

“This is the biggest reason why we haven’t won most men’s and women’s championships regularly,” he said.

The CCUNCs are an open event, meaning that anyone on a club or university team can compete. But in order to qualify for funding from Carleton, Mamen said a skier has to place in the top three at the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) championships or be named an all-star at that meet. That’s a standard that is “quite challenging in itself,” he added.

Carleton’s director of recreation and athletics Jennifer Brenning said the standard set to qualify for funding does not differ from other individual sports at the national level.

“Most national events have [qualification] standards like swimming and track and field… and very tough standards,” she said, noting that since the ski nationals are an open event, the school developed its own standards to “provide funding support to athletes who, from our perspective, are deemed eligible for the national championship.”

But Mamen said the current criteria for funding doesn’t quite add up right. Both Colin Abbott and Adele Lay missed OUAs to attend the World University Games in Turkey.

“Two athletes went to [the Games], which is arguably a bigger event than OUAs, so they were not given money,” he said.

Skiers can also receive the same funding if they place in the top three at nationals, Mamen said, but it is a financial risk they have to take.

Second-year skier Ingrid Hagberg did not qualify for funding at OUAs after having a “really bad weekend” at the meet, but said she decided to go to nationals anyway. She said she was supported in part by club funding but had to put up some of her own money as well.

“Most of the people on our team already race at a pretty high level so going to nationals was sort of a given for us,” Hagberg said.

“[Hagberg] made a huge bold move,” Mamen said. “She knew she could do better than she did at OUAs.”

After winning the team sprint with Lay, Hagberg said she was granted $500 from the university.

“I was feeling a lot of pressure [to ski well] because it is a lot to pay. Five hundred dollars does help, even a little bit,” she said, adding that after receiving the funding from her club team and the university, she still had to contribute around $500 of her own money to cover her expenses in Canmore.

Abbot and Lay also qualified for funding at nationals.

Hagberg said that at the OUA level, “the funding is great” and the athletes are fully covered. But at a national level, she said some skiers are being held back because of their financial situation.

“I think the standard, while it is a good motivation for us to ski fast, it is kind of bad because it is hindering us in a way too,” she said. “I know there were people, especially a lot of girls, who didn’t go because they don't have enough funding.”

“That’s one of the problems with skiing,” Mamen said. “It’s freaking expensive.”

“We’d love to see more funding coming into the sport but this is kind of the reality that we have and we’ve accepted and we make the best of.”