The Hilltop Lesson: How Second Place at the NCAA Championship Became Hagenbuch’s Guiding Philosophy

On a bright March afternoon at Dartmouth’s Oak Hill, with a soft and slow course under his skis and a band he himself had organized blasting in the stadium above, John Steel Hagenbuch approached the final climb where he learned something that would shape the early years of his career far more than any podium ever could.

He had come into the NCAA Championships with the weight of a thousand private dreams — a home championship crescendo and an entire community behind him. Then, with Utah’s Joe Davies charging to the finish line waving the Utes flag and Peter Graves’ voice echoing through the trees, Hagenbuch realized he was not going to win.

“I got dropped, and it just wasn’t gonna happen,” he says. “I told myself, you’ve got until the top of this hill to be upset about it.”

What happened next wasn’t the reaction of an athlete who had just been beaten in the race he’d been thinking about, talking about, training for, and dreaming about for three years. It was something quieter. Something older. Something that didn’t look like the scripted champion he’d imagined — but ended up becoming the cornerstone of the athlete he is now.

“I stopped poling,” he says. “And I just kind of skated through the stadium… smiling, waving, like the Penguins of Madagascar — smile and wave.”

He remembers the sunshine, the thousands of people lining the stadium, the Stripers — Dartmouth’s biggest student band, coaxed back from post-graduation life because he wanted the place to feel alive — and the thrum of friends, professors, fraternity brothers, and family in the crowd.

“Did I win the ski race? No. But it actually didn’t matter,” he says. “I was just so grateful… all the amazing things in my life that had led me to that point.”

Every day since, he thinks about that race. “But not for the reasons you’d expect.”

Muonio, Finland: The Final Quiet Before the Season Begins

Eight months later, Hagenbuch is sitting in a small room in Muonio, Finland, speaking over a fickle internet connection. Outside, winter is closing in; inside, the early-season nervous energy is beginning to hum.

“It’s been a good way to start the season,” he says of the classic sprint and 10k skate he raced the previous weekend. “Hopefully more to come.”

He will likely stay on the World Cup through the Tour de Ski. His primary goal, stated simply and without ornament, is clear: “Primary goal is to go to the Olympics. Everything else is secondary.”

He’s 24, still at Dartmouth — technically a senior, though he took this fall off to focus on training. When winter term begins on January 7, he’ll be back in class, shifting between World Cups and essays, navigating the dual life of a college student and a professional skier the way only NCAA athletes truly understand.

But he is not rushed. Not impatient. Not gripping the rail of his career with white knuckles.

He learned something on that hill at Oak Hill, something that has become his ballast. “It reminds me why I do this,“ he says. “And why this sport is so special.”

The Long View: Three Olympics and a Full-Moon Ski

Hagenbuch surprises you with the distance of his vision.

When asked about the future, he doesn’t talk only about Milano-Cortina in 2026. He talks about three Olympics — a decade of life sketched out in calm, confident lines.

“I would love to go to the next three Olympics,“ he says. “Milano-Cortina, then the French Alps, and then retire at the Salt Lake City 2034 Games.”

Soldier Hollow, where he has raced “probably 50 times,“ would be the perfect ending. But it’s not the race he imagines most clearly. Not the ceremony. Not the result.

It’s the lead-up.

“What will be the crown jewel of my ski career,“ he says, “is having the 2034 Olympic pre-camp in Sun Valley. At my house. With all the fellows.”

He can picture it already: the team skiing at Prairie Creek under a full moon, crispy tracks at 15 degrees after a sunny day, the quiet of the Sawtooths pressing close.

“That’s what I’m gonna remember when I’m 75,“ he says. “That Prairie Creek ski.”

In this way, Hagenbuch does not think like most 24-year-old athletes. He thinks like someone who has already lost something, already gained something, and has made peace with what remains.

A Training Philosophy Built on Feel (and a Fearless Lack of Overthinking)

In an era where professional endurance athletes run lactate strips daily and analyze heart-rate drift with the devotion of day traders, Hagenbuch stands apart.

“Do you do lactate testing?“ I ask him.

“Maybe like once a year.”

He trains primarily by feel—not just how his body feels, but what he feels like doing: long backcountry days, ridge runs, mountain biking, skiing deep into the mountains around Sun Valley. There is structure, but only when he believes it should exist.

“Not taking it too seriously,“ he says, “and kind of just going by what I would like to do and what I think is going to be fun.”

June and July? “Absolutely not“ analytical. Fall? Yes, that’s when he “locks in a bit.”

And if it ever stops being fun, he says, “I will not stick around.”

He has seen athletes grind themselves into dust out of fear of what’s next. “I respect the grit,“ he says, “but… I’m incredibly grateful to have had experiences and opportunities in my life that that’s not the case for me.”

He isn’t clinging to skiing. He’s choosing it — every day — until it no longer feels right.

That clarity is rare. Maybe even elite.

The Consortium: Osgood, Whitcomb, Kapala, and Holmes

Though he trains by feel, he is not without guidance. His coaching structure is more like a board of advisors — four voices, each offering a different vantage point.

“I talk with Brayton at Dartmouth, and Matt on the U.S. team, and Rick — my high school coach — and Peter Holmes on the Gold Team,“ he says. “I get input from all of those guys.”

When deciding to come to Muonio early, he called all four. Not for permission — for perspective.

“When I’m at Dartmouth, I do Brayton’s plan,“ he says. “But if I feel like I need to do something different, he’s totally cool with that.”

And contrary to what a young elite athlete might hope to hear, most of what they tell him is not “do more.“

“Oftentimes,“ he says, “it’s settled down.”

The Place That Built Him

If you want to understand why Hagenbuch thinks the way he does — why gratitude flows so naturally through him, and why he measures life through moments rather than medals — you have to understand Dartmouth.

“NCAA skiing is a really special thing,“ he says. “People are going to roll their eyes… but there aren’t a lot of places that have the components Dartmouth has.”

The social component is not a distraction — it’s a pillar. “Last year, every single guy on the team was in a fraternity,“ he says. “Different fraternities.”

He explains the structure: students join Greek life in their sophomore year, after they’ve already found their people, their communities, their balance.

“Everything acts as a complement,“ he says. “And providing that much balance… makes everything greater than the sum of its parts.”

The feeling at NCAAs captured this perfectly. “Anyone who was there,“ he says, “left thinking two things: college skiing is [so] sick and Dartmouth is [so] sick.”

He means it.

And he knows it won’t come again — not in this form.

Luke Allen, one of his closest friends, once asked an older alumnus if life ever gets as good as Dartmouth skiing. The man looked him straight in the eye and said, “No.“

The Beauty of Losing

Here is the strange and elegant truth of Hagenbuch’s current career: his most important athletic memory is a loss.

He doesn’t hide from that. He doesn’t twist it into “motivation“ or pretend it fuels some internal fire for revenge.

Instead, he carries it like a compass.

“I think about that race every single day,“ he says. “But not because I lost… It reminds me to be grateful for these amazing people, places, and things in my life.”

He printed 150 photos at CVS the night before leaving Hanover in August — family, friends, the Haig Glacier, Sun Valley, Dartmouth — and plastered them across his fridge at home.

“Think how many times a day you walk by your fridge,“ he says. “All my friends are right there.“

It’s his daily reminder of what matters.

The Thursday classic race at NCAAs, the unexpected great day, the team’s move from fifth to first — these have become larger in his memory than the race he thought he wanted most.

“What was the special day at NCAAs?“ he says. “It was Thursday. I wasn’t even thinking about Thursday. I didn’t care how that one went.”

And yet: “I had probably my best classic race ever… it was such a culmination of a lot of hard work and belief.”

This is the philosophy he now lives by: you learn more from your losses, and sometimes the thing you didn’t expect becomes the thing you carry forever.

The Advice Only Someone Who Has Lived It Can Give

At the Haig Glacier last summer — years after his last high school camp there — Hagenbuch offered a piece of advice that caught the younger kids off guard.

They were expecting training insight. Intensity zones. Technique tweaks.

Instead, he told them the thing he wishes someone had told him at 15:

“Be a kid more.”

Growing up in Sun Valley, he had an idyllic childhood — but he wishes he’d stayed on the high school soccer team after freshman year. Wishes he’d allowed himself to do more of what felt right, not what looked right.

“Don’t try to do what you think you should do,“ he says. “Do what you feel you should do.”

And if your friends are doing something slightly reckless, something that wouldn’t make the parental brochure?

“Maybe… F-it, do it,“ he says, laughing. “You’ll figure it out for yourself.”

Because that, too, is how you learn.

A Career Just Beginning, with the Wisdom of One Already Lived

Hagenbuch is young — young enough to dream of three Olympic Games, young enough to talk about walking onto the Dartmouth lightweight rowing team or running the 5k or 10k for the track team “as a fun challenge“ in his final spring on campus.

But he is also old in the ways that matter. Not jaded — never that. But precise in what deserves his attention, and ruthless in discarding what doesn’t.

He knows what a good race feels like: “When you finish and think, damn, I could have gone a little harder.”

He knows what a good life feels like: something filled with people and place, community and joy, full-moon skis and carnival tailgates and the band you recruited yourself playing you through the stadium after a loss.

And he knows — already — that the real currency of this sport isn’t medals, nor money, nor even wins.

“If you wanted to have glory or make money in sports,“ he says, “we’re all doing the wrong sport.”

So what is it about?

“It’s about the things I’ve talked about,“ he says. “It’s the parking lot tailgates. The little antics in the van. The dumb jokes with your boys. The feeling of being part of something bigger.”

And that’s why the NCAA hilltop moment carries him into this World Cup season — a season he hopes travels through Italy, under Olympic lights, wearing the colors he’s dreamed about.

Because that hill taught him the thing every great athlete eventually learns:

Sometimes the race you don’t win becomes the story you never stop telling.

Sometimes the best version of your career begins the moment you stop being upset… and start taking in the view.

 

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