Alex Kochon

As a sixth grader growing up in Bend, Ore., Neve Gerard was paying attention when Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins won U.S. cross-country skiing’s first Olympic gold medal. She wasn’t a full-on skier back then—she was more into running and mountain biking—but she remembers thinking how cool it was. Nearly six years later, she found herself warming up on the same Olympic course where the duo won the team sprint in PyeongChang, South Korea. Gerard,...

  Anhelina Hryhorenko is a typical 14-year-old girl in many ways—she loves art and isn’t a fan of math. And she’s excited to have her freshman year of school over. But she’s got a lot of unique qualities, too. For one, she’s a junior national champion with more medals than she can hold in two hands. She’s also the daughter of a former national cross-country ski team member team and the niece of a three-time...