By Gavin Kentch
Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center has won the NNF Cup for the past year, reflecting its status as the club or college team that had the strongest cumulative performances across the 2023/2024 domestic race season. The cup is awarded by, well, the National Nordic Foundation, or NNF, and is scored off of top-10 finishes in SuperTour and national championship races last season. There are also bonuses available for club-affiliated athletes who qualify for prominent international trips or for the domestic U16 camp.
APU previously claimed the NNF Cup for the 2021/2022 season. The University of Utah took the title last year. Beginning last season, NNF awarded the winning club or college $3,000.
This is typically where I append the qualification that I have trained and raced with APU Masters for the past decade, but also it should be pretty self-evident that my 42-year-old slow-ass self was not logging any SuperTour top-10s to help the team, so make of that disclosure what you will.
In a press release from NNF, APU program director Erik Flora said, “It’s an honor to receive the NNF Cup. The APU Nordic Ski Center is committed to developing skiing on all levels from local to international. This award is special as it recognizes a full season of successful racing as a team. We thank the National Nordic Foundation for supporting U.S. athletes and clubs!”
In the same press release, NNF wrote, “With the awarding of this year’s NNF Cup, NNF recognizes the creativity and positive team culture that has helped APU become a top destination for American skiers to develop to their full potential, with its skiers playing a key part in the most successful season for American skiing ever on the World Cup.”
About that World Cup: On my reading of the results spreadsheet, this year’s NNF Cup is largely a prize about who has the deepest bench, i.e., which team can send athletes to the World Cup but also have enough bodies left over at home to race well in domestic contests. It is also a prize about who shows up to race at Spring Series; APU was essentially tied with Utah after the Birkie, the 13th of 17th scored races. APU then sent most of its World Cup athletes to Duluth, securing 387 of its season-long total of 1,038 race points in four days there (including 244 from the men’s team alone) to run away with the title. You can’t win races if you’re not on the starting line.
In the overall standings, it was APU first with 1,188 points (this represents the 1,038 points earned from races plus another 150 points earned for athlete trip qualification), Bridger Ski Foundation Pro Team second with 955 points, and University of Utah third with 873.5 points.
Broken out by gender, the women’s standings looked like this:
- Craftsbury, 570 points
- SMS T2, 478.5
- Bridger, 438
And the men’s standings were:
- APU, 903 points
- Bridger, 517
- Utah, 458
Congrats to a well-balanced BSF for being the only team appearing in both the men’s and women’s top-three. (Utah was close, ranking fourth for the women alongside third for the men.)
There are 53 different teams listed in the final Cup standings. On my reading, 28 of the clubs are there because they qualified at least one athlete for a listed trip or camp (World U23s, World Juniors, Youth Olympic Games, U18 Scando trip, or U16 camp). The other 25 clubs had at least one top-10 finish in a SuperTour or national championship race last season to their name; they may also have qualified athletes for trips.
Here are the overall standings for this year’s NNF Cup.
Last week in Duluth also saw podium ceremonies for the overall season-long SuperTour standings (which you can find here). The overall SuperTour leader at the close of the 2023/2024 season presumptively gets start rights for all World Cup races in Period 1 of the 2024/2025 season.
On the women’s side, Alayna Sonnesyn (SMS) racked up 325 points to lead the way here, narrowly ahead of Margie Freed (Craftsbury) with 323 points. Sydney Palmer-Leger (Utah) was third with 285 points.
For the men, Michael Earnhart of APU also claimed 325 points, ahead of Luke Jager of APU (249 points) and John Steel Hagenbuch of Dartmouth (239 points). All three men mentioned in this paragraph, plus Palmer-Leger for the women, are U23 athletes. The future is bright.
The points systems for individual SuperTour races and team NNF Cup scoring are disparate, n.b.; among other differences the former accounting gives ample bonuses for performances at national championship races and the latter does not.
Next year’s SuperTour season begins at [venue] on [date], where [venue] is someplace that has reliable snow (and ≠ Alaska, because 2025 U.S. Nationals will be in Anchorage) and [date] is presumptively early December 2024. You should expect four SuperTour races in December, wrapping up approximately two weeks before Nationals, though this is just my very strong sense of standard practice rather than anything that is set in stone. More details to come following the scheduling meeting at next month’s USSS Spring Congress.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love 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.
