By Gavin Kentch
Through two of four races at this year’s Junior Nationals at Mt Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, New England is firmly in the driver’s seat as it seeks to claim the Alaska Cup, awarded to the top-performing region at JNs, for the sixteenth time in the last twenty years.
Going into Friday’s mass start races, New England had amassed 640 points in the overall cup standings, to Intermountain’s 541 and Alaska’s 536. The three regions were effectively tied after Monday’s interval-start racing, so anything can happen out there, but New England’s performance in Wednesday’s classic sprints was strong and, especially, balanced.
Update late Friday: New England logged an obscenely dominant performance in Friday’s races. They ended the day with a staggering 300+ point lead over Intermountain and Alaska.
We’re literally talking about 14-year-olds here, in some cases, so I am reluctant to really dive too deeply into the strengths or weaknesses of individual results as they bear on team scoring. But I don’t think it is offensive to note that New England has for years performed very well on sprint day, nor further to note that winning a trophy based on cumulative team performance rewards a strong showing across all six scoring divisions (male and female U16, U18, and U20). Put those two together, and you can conclude that New England claimed strong performances across the board on Wednesday to vault into the overall lead.
Put another way, after Monday’s 7.5-kilometer interval-start skate races, Alaska was in the lead in the race for its eponymous cup, with 269 points. Intermountain was second, with 260 points, and New England just back in third, with 255 points. There was already a substantial gap to fourth (Rocky Mountain, 169 points) and fifth (Midwest, 160 points).
Once scoring had been completed for Wednesday’s classic sprints, New England had vaulted from 14 points back of Alaska and 9 points back of Intermountain to 99 points up on Intermountain and 104 points up on Alaska. That’s a big swing! Put another way, New England currently leads the overall standings with 640 points; it earned 385 of those points on Wednesday. That’s more than the two-day total of all but three other regions.
Hot take, the New England kids are good at classic sprinting in, let us say, classic New England conditions. (I.e., it is warm there. But also New England also took the Alaska Cup in Fairbanks last March when races frequently had to be delayed until the temperature warmed to FIS-legal levels, so maybe New England just has a lot of athletes who are good at skiing and a well-established development pipeline and support system behind them. Ask NENSA and the bevy of local clubs what they’re doing right there; these things are above my pay grade.)
Going into today’s mass start classic races, it was New England, 640 points; Intermountain, 541; and Alaska, 536, as noted. Rocky Mountain (314) and Midwest (286) maintained their positions in fourth and fifth, but the gaps had only grown.
Sixth through tenth in the Alaska Cup standings remained the same on Wednesday as on Monday: Far West, Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes, High Plains, and Mid-Atlantic, in that order.
Here are individual podium finishers from the first two days of racing. Yes I know that Friday’s mass start races are still wrapping up as I post this; there was a not-brief race hold due to sloppy course conditions, so it’s going to be a long day out there today.
7.5km interval-start skate
U16 girls: Lea Perreard (New England), first; Linnea Ousdigian (Midwest), second; Mary Harrington (New England), third
U16 boys: Logan Drevlow (Midwest), Ian Carmack (Intermountain), Tristan Thrasher (Rocky Mountain)
U18 girls: Lena Poduska (Intermountain), Ally Wheeler (High Plains), Britta Johnson (Far West)
U18 boys: Tabor Greenberg (New England), Vebjorn Flagstad (Alaska), Oskar Flora (Alaska) (disclosure: I donated to Oskar and Marit Flora’s GoFundMe to travel to these races)
U20 women: Rosie Whittington-Evans (Alaska), Greta Kilburn (New England), Adele Horning (Rocky Mountain)
U20 men: Jack Lange (New England), Ben Dohlby (Great Lakes), Davis Isom (Midwest)
Classic sprint
U16 girls: Isabella Waters (Intermountain), Miya Kam-Magruder (Alaska), Summer Bentley (New England)
U16 boys: Logan Drevlow (Midwest), Ian Carmack (Intermountain), Landon Laverdiere (Rocky Mountain)
U18 girls: Maeve Ingelfinger (Intermountain), Sydney Drevlow (Midwest), Frances Tucker (New England)
U18 boys: Murphy Kimball (Alaska), Miles Miner (New England), Anders Linseisen (New England)
U20 women: Greta Kilburn (New England), Marit Flora (Alaska), Lily Pannkuk (Alaska) (disclosure: I donated to Oskar and Marit Flora’s GoFundMe to travel to these races)
U20 men: Finegan Bailey (New England), Cole Flowers (Alaska), Derek “Buster” Richardson (Alaska)
Results: Full results for all races | Alaska Cup standings (Monday) | Alaska Cup standings (Wednesday) | Alaska Cup standings (Friday)
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love project dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
