On Friday afternoon, as World Cup sprinters snap into their skis in Trondheim and the SuperTour fields gather in Fairbanks, one of the United States’ most electrifying young Nordic athletes will step onto an entirely different stage. Stanford University, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Women’s Soccer Tournament, is marching toward the College Cup—and at the center of it all is a player who, in just a matter of days, will also begin her...
When Novie McCabe spoke with FasterSkier early last month, she was looking out the window of her place in Anchorage, waiting for winter to finally take hold. “We’re patiently waiting on snow,” she said. “But today might be the day.“ Outside, the ground was still in its in-between phase—too brown for grooming, just white enough that fish-scale skis could work if you were stubborn and optimistic about it. Alaska in November often asks skiers to...
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...
The first flakes had finally settled on the branches behind Rosie Brennan’s window in Anchorage. “Yeah, finally,” she said, turning from the screen toward the light outside. “God, it was slow to come, but we are getting there.” Snow matters in November for any cross-country skier. Still, for Brennan—now entering her fifteenth season on the U.S. Ski Team—it has always represented something deeper: familiarity, grounding, the landscape she moves through on her own terms. Independence,...
Julia Kern finds herself heading into an Olympic season as one of the veterans for the US women’s cross country ski team. At the age of twenty-three, she’s ready to take on the leadership role left by the retirements of long-time team members Sadie Maubet Bjornsen and Sophie Caldwell Hamilton. After a lackluster season — by her own lofty standards — she has shaken off the disappointment, along with a hamstring injury she picked up...