Nominations for next season’s cross-country skiing national team will, I assume, be announced at some point later this month. But until the official announcement is handed down from Park City, I went ahead and took a stab at predicting this now for your reading pleasure. Come back next (?) week and mock me if I got this wrong, although now, as always, I stand by my reporting.
This news analysis is based on the official criteria for nomination to the 2024 national team, which are available here. These criteria in turn make reference to the final standings for the Sprint and Distance Cup for the 2022/2023 World Cup season, available here; world rankings from the eighth and final FIS points list for the 2022/2023 season, available here; and results from 2023 FIS Junior & U23 World Cross Country Championships, available here.
I simply read athletes’ rankings and race results against the published criteria, then slotted in athletes under the team for which they qualified. By my math, this exercise leads to a total of 23 athletes who have met the objective criteria and should expect to be named (“will be selected”) to the national team. I noted each athlete’s basis for team selection in parentheses following their name. Some athletes qualify to the national team under more than one criterion.
The only sort-of-exception here is four relatively young athletes who clearly qualify for the D-Team, and who presumably qualify for the B-Team as well but who do not explicitly fall within the age ranges envisioned for that team (TLDR, they are too fast too young). I would assume, but cannot guarantee, that these athletes will be nominated to the B-Team. There was certainly some play in this area present in last year’s nominations when it came to which specific team a qualified athlete was assigned to.
All 23 athletes qualify for the national team via the application of objective criteria, viz., race results, world rankings, and World Cup standings. The criteria document also makes reference to “Athletes who have been given individual performance criteria to meet,” stating that such athletes “will be subject to those specific criteria and not to general criteria,” which largely means objective criteria.
It’s hard to prove a negative, but I am not personally aware of any athletes who have been provided with such individual performance criteria over the past few seasons. This, obviously, does not mean that this has never happened, but my sense is that this is a relatively rare occurrence. Moreover, for what it is worth, when Program Director Chris Grover has recently discussed athletes named to the team on a discretionary basis, he has mentioned their public World Cup results (e.g., Zak Ketterson was on a winning relay team and finished 15th in an individual distance race near the end of the 2021/2022 season) rather than their adherence to individual performance criteria.
The criteria document also provides for discretionary selection, stating that U.S. Ski & Snowboard may “select additional athletes to the team . . . using discretion based upon factors other than the objective criteria.” Some included-but-not-limited-to factors are set out in the document, concluding with the catchall provision, “Other unanticipated failure of objective criteria to select an athlete likely to achieve competition results consistent with the U.S. Ski and Snowboard program goals.”
Zak Ketterson and Kevin Bolger are athletes who were selected to last year’s national team via the exercise of discretion. Again, Grover discussed the reasons for their selection in this podcast.
The following 23 athletes have all met the objective criteria to be named to the 2023/2024 national team. The last three seasons saw 22, 21, and 23 athletes, respectively, named to the national team. For perspective, there were five athletes total on the national team in the Olympic season of 2005/2006, including zero women. This year’s team currently includes nine women and fourteen men. Additional athletes could obviously be added on a discretionary basis. Stay tuned.
A-Team
Women
Rosie Brennan (basis for selection: top-15 in Distance Cup for 2022/2023 World Cup season)
Jessie Diggins (top-15 in Distance Cup for 2022/2023 World Cup season, among many other avenues for meeting the A-Team standard)
Julia Kern (top-15 in Sprint Cup for 2022/2023 World Cup season)
Men
Ben Ogden (top-15 in Sprint Cup for 2022/2023 World Cup season)
JC Schoonmaker (world rank of 40th or better on final FIS points list (sprint) for male athlete born in 2000)
B-Team
Women
Sophia Laukli (top-10 U23 Championships finish plus multiple top-30 World Cup finishes for athlete born in 2000; world rank of 80th or better on final FIS points list (distance) for female athlete born in 2000)
Men
Luke Jager (world rank of 125th or better on final FIS points list (both sprint and distance) for male athlete born in 2000)
Scott Patterson (world rank of 40th or better on final FIS points list (distance) for athlete born in 1994 or earlier)
Gus Schumacher (world rank of 125th or better on final FIS points list (distance) for male athlete born in 2000)
Hunter Wonders* (world rank of 70th or better on final FIS points list (distance) for male athlete born in 1998)
* Wonders may well not accept the nomination if he is retired, but he objectively earned selection to the B-Team based on his results last season.
B-Team (I assume)
These athletes would all meet the objective criteria for the B-Team, or would if they were older. I would assume that they would be named to the highest team for which they qualify, i.e., the B-Team, likely under the discretionary selection provision of the criteria document. They have certainly all met the objective criteria to qualify for the D-Team.
John Steel Hagenbuch
Novie McCabe
Zanden McMullen
Sydney Palmer-Leger
D-Team
Women
Haley Brewster (top-10 finish at World Juniors)
Samantha Smith (multiple top-10 finishes at World Juniors; world rank of 250th or better on final FIS points list (both sprint and distance) for female athlete born in 2003–2006)
Ava Thurston (world rank of 250th or better on final FIS points list (both sprint and distance) for female athlete born in 2003–2006)
Men
Brian Bushey (world rank of 250th or better on final FIS points list (both sprint and distance) for male athlete born in 2002)
Michael Earnhart (world rank of 250th or better on final FIS points list (sprint) for male athlete born in 2002)
Walker Hall (world rank of 250th or better on final FIS points list (both sprint and distance) for male athlete born in 2002)
Max Kluck (world rank of 400th or better on final FIS points list (sprint) for male athlete born in 2003–2006)
Will Koch (world rank of 250th or better on final FIS points list (sprint) for male athlete born in 2002)
Derek Richardson (world rank of 400th or better on final FIS points list (sprint) for male athlete born in 2003–2006)
— Gavin Kentch
