By Gavin Kentch
The conclusion of all four races held in Anchorage this week — first the three races at 2025 U.S. National Cross-Country Championships, then the standalone SuperTour that followed it — means that presumptive American teams are now mostly known for World U23 Championships, which will be held in Bergamo/Schilpario, Italy, from February 3–9.
(Without delving too deep into the math, team nominations for World Juniors and U18 Scando Trip were based on an athlete’s two best races out of three, while team naming for World U23 Championships looks to an athlete’s two best races out of four. So the two U20 teams were known after Sunday’s race, but the U23 team was not known until racing concluded yesterday.)
According to the official USSS points list spreadsheet, which you can find here, the following athletes have qualified for the American team for 2025 World U23 Championships:
Women
Sydney Palmer-Leger, SMS T2*
Kate Oldham, Montana State University
Kendall Kramer, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Nina Seemann, Dartmouth College
Emma Strack, St. Lawrence University
Men
Jack Young, Colby College*
Michael Earnhart, APU Nordic Ski Center
Walker Hall, University of Utah
Will Koch, University of Colorado
Trey Jones, University of Colorado
Jack Christner, Middlebury College
* Palmer-Leger and Young pre-qualified, per the criteria, by finishing top-30 in one or more World Cup races in Period 1 of this season. The other nine athletes on this list qualified on the basis of their performances in Anchorage this week.
A few more athletes may yet be named over the next few days, depending on the interplay of acceptances, Period 3 World Cup nominations (and acceptances of those nominations), individual season plans and priorities, and other variables. Stay tuned.
Coaches and staff for these championships were previously announced by U.S. Ski & Snowboard in late December. You can find that information in the article above.
“U23 athletes will be announced January 7th, 2025 based on the selection criteria posted in the Resource Section,” USSS states. It is hard to prove a negative, but I do not believe that USSS has yet officially announced the U23 athletes chosen to the team. The same website notes that “WJC Athletes will be announced on January 5th, 2025 based on the selection criteria posted in the Resource Section”; I also do not believe that this announcement has been made yet.
Finally, the only “selection criteria posted in the Resource Section” are still the criteria used for 2024 World U23s. That said, an information meeting and uniforming were held in the Kincaid chalet yesterday afternoon for athletes chosen for these trips, so it appears that USSS knows what it is doing on the ground even if the website has yet to be updated. I am not, actually, trying to be desperately snarky here; rather the lawyer in me likes criteria documents, and the journalist in me likes when information that is supposed to be publicly available is publicly available, and I do have to call out a $32 million organization when it fails to accomplish this in time for its national championship.
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