Exclusive: Who’s On the 2025/2026 U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team?

By Gavin Kentch

A formal announcement of who has been named to the national team — excuse me, the 2025/2026 Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team — should be forthcoming from U.S. Ski & Snowboard later this summer or fall. But would you like to know, now, who will be named to this year’s team? I can tell you that, now; more precisely, I can tell you who will be named to the team on the basis of objective criteria. There is also a discretionary avenue for nomination, which historically has been little-used, but which I think is more salient and interesting this year than is often the case, because of Rosie Brennan. And maybe also Novie McCabe.

But such speculation may be found later in this article. For now, here are the athletes who have qualified for the national team for next season under objective criteria based on their performance in the 2024/2025 season. TLDR, such criteria look to some or all of results on the World Cup, World Championships, and World Junior/U23 Championships; to an athlete’s standing in the season-long World Cup sprint and distance rankings; and, for younger athletes, to their standing in the overall FIS points world rankings.

Anyway. Enough methodology. Here is your objectively selected national team for 2025/2026. Team affiliations given are my own; stand by for some updates from the collegians over the next few months re: what’s next for them in life.

A-Team

men

Ben Ogden (SMS)

JC Schoonmaker (APU)

Gus Schumacher (APU)

women

Jessie Diggins (SMS)

Julia Kern (SMS)

Sophia Laukli (Team Aker Dæhlie)

B-Team

men

John Steel Hagenbuch (currently Dartmouth College, though he graduates soon)

Zanden McMullen (APU)

Jack Young (currently Colby College, though he graduates soon)

women

Kate Oldham (currently Montana State University, though she graduates soon)

Sammy Smith (Stanford University)

D-Team

Men

Tabor Greenberg (University of Vermont)

Murphy Kimball (University of Alaska Anchorage)

Lucas Wilmot (University of Utah)

women

Kendall Kramer (currently University of Alaska Fairbanks, soon to be APU)

Sydney Palmer-Leger (SMS)

You can find this year’s USSS team criteria document, which underlies this article, here. You can find World Cup discipline standings here. You can find FIS world rankings here. If you would like a compilation of which skiers finished in the top x athletes y times in various international race series, a criterion that frequently occurs in this year’s USSS document in various iterations, well, that’s the value that I’m adding with this article, since no public database will tell you that without a lot of research.

(Okay, to show my work a little: If you would like a listing of those athletes who had World Cup starts for the U.S. last year, you can find that here. And here is the more expansive list of not only those athletes who had a World Cup start in that time but also those who were nominated for same, including alternates; yes I know that some people on this latter list are retired.)

On team size

There are, on this accounting, 16 athletes named to this year’s team. On the one hand, this is the smallest national team in seven years, not to mention a substantial decrease from the record-breaking 27 athletes named to the team for 2024/2025. On the other hand, the total team size was consistently 16 athletes, or smaller, dating back to the Pyeongchang Olympics era and before.

For some historical perspective, here is the size of the national team over the past decade. The data given below are drawn from this article, and the sources cited therein. The total given for this year is preliminary, inasmuch as one or more athletes could yet be added on a discretionary basis.

season	athletes on national team
2016/2017	16
2017/2018	16
2018/2019	16
2019/2020	20
2020/2021	23
2021/2022	21
2022/2023	22
2023/2024	23
2024/2025	27
2025/2026	16

As noted, there were 27 athletes on the national team last year, the highest total this century and I assume all time. The average team size for the past six years was slightly less than 23 athletes. Both of these numbers are, clearly, larger than 16.

So… are the criteria getting tighter, or are the athletes getting “worse”? I’m going to run some more numbers before hazarding a more definitive take in a future article, but my preliminary answer is that all-time academic copout, “Actually, I think it’s a little of both.” You’re welcome.

What I mean by this is that this year’s selection criteria are, objectively speaking, more stringent than last year’s. And also that — this is clearly more subjective, but I stand by this take — American performances were, generally speaking, slightly down across the board this season when compared to 2023/2024. I’m too nice to single out individual athletes here and seem to attempt to quantify their shortcomings, but that is definitely my sense of how 2024/2025 went for the U.S., if you are painting in broad strokes. (There are clearly individual exceptions: Julia Kern, Kate Oldham, and Kendall Kramer, among others, all had great seasons!)

For some general corroboration of that feeling, here’s JC Schoonmaker, to this website, following the final race of the 2024/2025 World Cup season: “This season we have fought and raced as hard as we could all year. It may not have been our best season ever and it definitely had its ups and downs but we’re fired up to build off of this year and keep pushing forward. We should be proud of our effort and how we have carried ourselves all winter and we can just keep working on our belief that we can be a top ski nation and making that dream come true.”

Or here’s Adam St.Pierre of USSS, at the ca. 21:30 mark of a recent SederSkier podcast: “We’re rising up the Nation’s Cup scoring [on the World Cup], if you look at that as just a rough metric of improvement. But it came to our attention today, if we take Jessie Diggins’s individual World Cup points out of the Nation’s Cup scoring, we might not actually be improving at the rate we think we might be.”

Combine these trends with harder standards to meet, and, mutatis mutandis, you should expect a smaller team size as a result. That seems to be what has occurred.

There is an obvious follow-up question here about whether a smaller national team is “good” or “bad” (or just neutral). I will put such a question to Chris Grover or Matt Whitcomb soon, once I have crunched some more numbers and have a slightly more quantifiable and helpful way in which to ask this question. Stay tuned.

What about Rosie Brenann?

The lion’s share of the USSS criteria document (which, again, you may view here) discusses objective selection to the national team. Here is what this document has to say about discretionary selection:

There is an obvious name that arises in connection with the third bullet point, and that name is Rosie Brennan. Brennan was clearly not herself for nearly all of last season. I do not know, on or off the record, precisely what she has been battling. I’m not sure that Brennan knows, either, which has been heartbreaking to witness. She wrote in a season-ending Instagram post, “I don’t have a full understanding of everything but my body feels unbelievably foreign and is screaming it’s under attack so it’s time to stop, reevaluate, and try again.”

Notably, this was not a retirement post. Brennan wrote that it was time to try again, not to bow out of high-level competitive sport. And she concluded the post, “My love for skiing and the people around it are what keeps me motivated to press on 💗.” Again: not a retirement announcement.

So, would you name Rosie Brennan to the 2025/2026 national team under the exercise of discretion, based on her experiencing “illness or injury during the Selection Period”? I simply cannot say this without editorializing, sorry, but, personally speaking, I would.

Brennan came thisclose to objective qualification as it was. Making the A-Team requires, inter alia, three individual top-12 World Cup finishes last season, and Brennan was 8th, 9th, and 14th between Period 1 and the start of Period 2. Move her up two places (okay, and a healthy 30 seconds) in a 15km mass start classic in Toblach during the Tour de Ski, from 14th to 12th, and we aren’t even having this conversation now.

I further feel that indicia of medal potential in future Olympics is there; Brennan at her best is a podium threat in multiple disciplines. Indeed, she had Team USA in medal position through five of six laps in the team sprint in Beijing, before the team’s anchor faded from third to fifth over her final leg. Finally, I’m really trying to avoid writing, like, “Give the aging veteran one last shot in her final season to see what she can do,” but I know you’re thinking it, too. (N.b., I do not affirmatively know that this is Brennan’s last season.)

What about Novie McCabe?

Novie McCabe also had a rough season while dealing with some sort of health struggle (you can read the little we know about her wellbeing here). McCabe’s FIS profile for last season is pretty thin on the ground; she started one race, in February 2025, and was DNS in three others. That’s it.

McCabe’s current rank on the year-end FIS points list is 92nd. It is marked with a pound sign in the rankings list, which denotes “injury status protection.” This is a status that lets qualifying athletes keep (most of) their pre-injury FIS points, and so not be penalized for a qualifying absence.

At the end of last season McCabe’s world rank was 37th, which would easily qualify her for this year’s B-Team. Were I in charge I would also name her to this year’s team, but (a) I am a softie in general and (b) I personally know and like Novie, so I am clearly biased. You may discuss Novie amongst yourselves in the comments.

Showing my work

Here is the basis for objective qualification to the national team for each athlete set forth in the first part of this article.

A-Team

Jessie Diggins (basis or bases for qualification: top-15 distance ranking; top-15 sprint ranking; individual World Cup podium; three top-12 World Cup finishes)

Julia Kern (individual World Cup podium; three top-12 World Cup finishes)

Sophia Laukli (three top-12 World Cup finishes)

Ben Ogden (top-15 sprint cup ranking; individual World Cup podium; three top-12 World Cup finishes)

Gus Schumacher (top-15 distance ranking; individual World Cup podium; three top-12 World Cup finishes)

JC Schoonmaker (top-15 sprint cup ranking; three top-12 World Cup finishes)

B-Team

John Steel Hagenbuch (top-100 world rank for distance for male athlete born in 2000 or later)

Zanden McMullen (three top-30 World Cup results for athlete born in 2000 or 2001; top-100 world distance rank and top-80 world sprint rank for athlete born in 2000 or later)

Kate Oldham (three top-30 World Cup or World Championships results for athlete born in 2002 or later)

Sammy Smith (top-80 world sprint rank for female athlete born in 2000 or later)

Jack Young (three top-30 World Cup results for athlete born in 2000 or later; top-80 world sprint rank for male athlete born in 2000 or later)

D-Team

Tabor Greenberg (top-400 world distance rank for male athlete born in 2005 or later)

Murphy Kimball (World Cup top-30 result for athlete born in 2002 or later; top-250 world sprint rank for male athlete born in 2005 or later)

Kendall Kramer (top-30 World Cup result for athlete born in 2002 or latert; top-10 U23 result; top-100 world distance rank for female athlete born in 2002)

Sydney Palmer-Leger (top-30 World Cup result for athlete born in 2002)

Lucas Wilmot (top-10 result at World Juniors for athlete born in 2005 or later)

Congratulations to all athletes named to the national team this year. Expect more on this story soonish once I run a few more numbers and have some more data for you.

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