The U.S. and Canada have named their squads for FIS Cross Country World Junior and U23 Championships, set to begin later this month in Goms, Switzerland. Both countries’ selections include athletes who excelled against the senior fields at recent domestic races (U.S. National Championships and NorAms) which served as selection races for Olympic teams. In fact, Canada’s U23 women did so well against their senior compatriots that it’s unclear who will represent Canada at the...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — It turns out that Caitlin Patterson does have a weakness: Swedes. The 27-year-old Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) skier was denied her first outright victory of the week when she crossed the finish line second to Hedda Bångman, a former member of Sweden’s U23 National Team who now skis for the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), in the women’s 20-kilometer classic mass start at the 2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships on Sunday morning...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — It was what most locals, or those familiar to the area, referred to as standard Anchorage weather: heavy, wet snow, temperatures reading around 31 degrees Fahrenheit, and a darkened sky that seemed to be brooding over whether or not to let the sun out of bed — the sky covered in a shroud of gray. With the Pacific Ocean just 600 meters to the southwest and Kincaid Park’s nordic venue, the host...
2018 U.S. Cross Country Championships (Anchorage, Alaska): 10/15 k freestyle Women’s report The Patterson siblings are crushing it on Day 1 of the U.S. Cross Country Championships at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska. Scott Patterson raced to a 55.2-second victory over Noah Hoffman in the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle individual start on Wednesday. Patterson is an Anchorage-based U.S. Ski Team (USST) member who trains with Alaska Pacific University (APU). Hoffman is a former USST member who...
UNM suggests that athletes who can compete for the podium will readily find another home. Where does that leave solid skiers who are realistically not yet podium contenders? “We have been informed about this so late that it is too late to apply to many scholarships,” UNM skier Brenna Egan says. “Of course I am going to do everything I can, but every indication is pointing to the end of my ski career.”
Through the four legs of the women's Junior World's 4 x 3.3 k relay the U.S. team was in it. Nordic Nation has the coach, Bryan Fish, and the four skiers (Hailey Swirbul, Julia Kern, Hannah Halvorsen, and Katherine Ogden) in this relay focused episode.
When is a race-time temperature of 2 above not so bad? When it's 16 below at the airport. Team Alaska was named as the Besh Cup series wrapped up in Fairbanks over the weekend, in conditions that one local skier described as "not too cold."
For fans of North American skiing, some of the last races of U23 and Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, proved beyond captivating, surpassing most expectations and previous results. But for the U.S. junior women’s relay, a group of four that had set a goal two years ago at a U.S. development training camp, the podium was exactly where they had envisioned themselves. Relay bronze Hailey Swirbul, Julia Kern, Hannah Halvorsen, and...
FIS Nordic Junior World Championships (Midway, Utah): Junior relays Hailey Swirbul, Julia Kern, Hannah Halvorsen, and Katharine Ogden on the podium. That’s right. Two days after Ogden became the first American to earn an individual medal at Junior World Championships, those four U.S. junior women listed above did the same, placing third in the 4 x 3.3-kilometer relay on the last day of 2017 Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. The team...
Almost exactly two years. That’s how long 19-year-old Katharine Ogden recalled her longing for a medal at Junior World Championships, but she can trace her inspiration back to much earlier as a kid growing up in southern Vermont. Her father, a ski coach, third in the World Cup classic sprint in PyeongChang, South Korea. That got Ogden excited for the day, and she went on to navigate her usual pre-race nerves, which were somewhat amplified...
FIS Nordic Junior World Championships (Midway, Utah): 10/20 k skiathlon A Junior World Championships medal has been on Katharine Ogden’s mind for some time — two years, to be exact. “Every day in training, it’s kind of something that I think about. It’s the little thing that helps me push myself,” Ogden, a 19-year-old member of the Stratton Mountain School and U.S. Ski Team D-team, said in a post-race interview with the U.S. Ski Team on Friday....
In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at this week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 USANA Nordic Junior World Championships and U23 Cross Country World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 18-year-old Hailey Swirbul, of the University of Alaska Anchorage, who’s representing the U.S. at her second Junior Worlds. On Friday, Swirbul raced to...
(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from Americans Katharine Ogden and Taeler McCrerey, as well as Canada’s Gareth Williams.) Katharine Ogden’s name had already been in the target race on Friday. “In the skiathalon I’m really hoping for another top 6 and maybe (hopefully) a podium.” “It’s really encouraging to know that all those U.S. Ski Team girls that are doing so well [on the World Cup] right now were in the same place that...
FIS Nordic Junior World Championships (Midway, Utah): 5/10 k freestyle Coming into 2017 Junior World Championships with a career-best individual of sixth at Junior Worlds (which she achieved in the 10-kilometer skiathlon two years ago), Women |
APU’s Scott Patterson and Jessica Yeaton, UAA’s Hailey Swirbul, and the UAF team all skied well in Fairbanks over the weekend in the continent’s first FIS races. Patterson jokes that he plans to purchase a time turner, so that he can “continue to win every single race in the U.S.”
UAA nordic coach Andrew Kastning may have a new baby and a new job search arrive at the same time next spring. His athletes may need to apply to college again for the second time in two years. Behind the dollars and cents, the human cost of the proposed end of UAA skiing.
There will be a fully funded cross-country ski team at the University of Alaska Anchorage this school year, but all bets are off when it comes to evaluating priorities across the athletic department for next year. That’s the word from University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) officials as the Alaska Legislature drags through its latest special session with no final budget yet approved.
Hailey Swirbul of the Aspen Valley Ski Club takes us through a workout her team recently did in West Yellowstone, one designed to prepare them for this weekend's races and the season ahead: Level 3/ Level 4 combination skate-intensity.
“You will struggle, you will fall … You will feel all of the work is for nothing, but it will always turn out in the end,” Jacobsen recently told a group of 135 juniors at the International Junior Camp in Sjusjøen, Norway. One of the athletes at camp, Hailey Swirbul recounts the Norwegian National Team member's message, with an emphasis on happiness and hard work.
For this week's workout, one of nine American skiers invited to the International Junior Camp in Norway shares the training session they did Monday: a competitive skate-sprint simulation on a 1.5 k loop.