By Gavin Kentch
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Welcome back to this year’s preview of the seven main professional ski clubs in this country. Previously this fall: BSF. And now here’s Sun Valley:
What is the official name of this ski team? Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation Cross Country Gold Team (also known as Sun Valley or SVSEF)
Where is it located? Ketchum, Idaho
Who is the coach? Peter Holmes
Who’s on the roster this season? Jake Adicoff, Mia Case, John Steel Hagenbuch, Will Koch, Sammy Smith, Elijah Weenig, and Peter Wolter. Steel Hagenbuch and Smith are on the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. Adicoff is on the U.S. Para Nordic Ski Team.
What’s different now from last season? Anna Sellers and Bentley Walker-Broose have moved on. Will Koch and Elijah Weenig join the team; Koch graduated from the University of Colorado and previously trained with SMS, while Weenig graduated from the University of Denver. Steel Hagenbuch has long been affiliated with the program, and now joins the team as a full-time professional athlete following his graduation from Dartmouth.
What were some highlights of last season? Jake Adicoff wasn’t quite undefeated in visually impaired para racing last season, but he was pretty darn close. I mean, just look at this results profile. That’s a whole bunch of wins, then two golds and two silvers at world championships, in the interval-start 10km classic, interval-start 20km skate, mixed relay, and classic sprint, respectively. (Dude has some range.) The classic sprint silver came in Trondheim on the same day as the team sprint at 2025 World Championships, marking the first time that para-athlete competition was held at able-bodied world champs.
Adicoff’s guide for the Trondheim silver was Sun Valley teammate Peter Wolter. His guide for the other three world champs races was Reid Goble of BSF. Wolter is on the short list for Adicoff’s guides for Milan–Cortina, where Adicoff will presumptively compete in his fourth Paralympic Games. “Unless Jake and I have a drastic falling out and hate each other in the next year, which I find unlikely, I will likely be there with Jake and, I’d assume, at least one other guide,” Wolter said in a recent profile.
Sammy Smith posted another winter’s worth of results that were sterling on the merits, perhaps closer to staggering when you consider that she was playing soccer at Stanford for the entire fall semester and not getting on snow until December 15, following the close of both the soccer season and her fall exams. Shortly after she journeyed north to Anchorage, where she promptly claimed her first career national championship, in the classic sprint. Her preparation was “obviously not ideal going into an event like this,” Smith told me in the Kincaid stadium. After winning a national title. Other results in Anchorage included fifth American in the 20km classic, seventh American in the 10km skate, and fifth overall, third American, in the SuperTour skate sprint.
From this point on, it was ski season for Smith. She journeyed over to Europe, were she placed fifth, eighth, and 14th at World Juniors, in the classic sprint, 10km skate, and 20km classic, respectively. From there it was back to the World Cup, where she made the heats in three out of four sprints she entered, finishing 25th, 27th, and 30th. She was also 12th in a team sprint, alongside Kate Oldham, and 16th in a relay, alongside Luke Jager, Kendall Kramer, and JC Schoonmaker.
Smith achieved all of this before her 20th birthday (she could have raced JNs this year lol). At some point I will stop couching her results as notable for her age, but probably not until she is old enough to legally drink in this country. Oh also, Stanford soccer made the final four in the women’s 2024 College Cup.
Will Koch similarly competed collegiately last season, in his case for Colorado, and on the ski team. He finished fifth in the 7.5km classic and 11th in the 20km skate at Dartmouth in his final NCAA Championships. Koch reached a national championship podium in January, finishing as the third American in the 20km classic. He was second and fourth in Period 1 SuperTour racing before that, in a 10km skate and skate sprint, respectively.
Koch spent the first half of February in Europe, where he was 19th, 25th, and 29th at World U23 Championships in Italy. He traveled north to Falun to claim his thirteenth career World Cup start a week later, finishing 45th in the 10km classic. He finished out his season with second, second, and fourth in the Jackson Hole version of Spring Series.
John Steel Hagenbuch had a successful winter at multiple levels of racing, but it would slight the Dartmouth man if I led with anything other than his win in the 7.5km classic at NCAA Championships. At Oak Hill Outdoor Center. On his home course. You love to see it. Two days later, he followed it up with second in the 20km skate.
On other race circuits, Steel Hagenbuch had four podium finishes in Birkieland on Period 1 of the SuperTour, before taking his talents north to Alaska. He swept the distance races at 2025 U.S. Nationals, finishing first overall in the 10km skate and as the first American in the 20km classic. (After the latter race, second-American Luke Jager was moved to observe of the overall winner, Andreas Kirkeng, “He’s probably the best skier in the world to never ski World Cup.”) Steel Hagenbuch continued to clean up domestically, taking two more SuperTour wins at Bozeman in January, and a national championship in the 40km classic at Lake Placid in March.
Steel Hagenbuch ended the season as the overall SuperTour leader, claiming the Period 1 World Cup starts for 2025/2026 that come with it. His results goal this winter, like many athletes’, is the Olympics, but last season was a chance to focus on domestic competition while getting on top of his breathing issues (he was diagnosed with exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction after having a rough time in Europe for the opening weekends of the 2024/2025 World Cup season). A fully healthy Steel Hagenbuch is a force; watch out, world.
Peter Wolter had six top-12 finishes on the SuperTour or at U.S. Nationals, highlighted by fifth in the 7.5km classic and sixth in the 20km skate at the Bozeman SuperTour in Period 3. His best result at U.S. Nationals was 11th (ninth American), in the 10km skate. As noted above, he also served as Adicoff’s guide for the 20km interval-start skate at Para World Championships, where Adicoff claimed gold.
Elijah Weenig had a strong season of NCAA racing in his final year at Denver, lodging seven top-10 finishes, including two top-fives, on the cutthroat RMISA circuit. He finished 12th in the 7.5km classic on the first day of NCAAs in March, the top nordic performance for the Denver men that day and a career-best finish at NCAA Championships. Weenig wrapped up his collegiate ski career two days later with a 21st in the 20km skate. He had four top-13 finishes on the SuperTour, led by seventh in the 20km skate and 11th in the 7.5km classic at the Bozeman SuperTour stop in January.
Finally, Mia Case graduated from the College of St. Scholastica in spring 2024, then undertook her first year as a professional skier. She raced a full SuperTour schedule save Spring Series last season, finishing eighth in a pair of sprints, both skate and classic, at the Birkie Trailhead in December. She had four additional top-20 SuperTour results, highlighted by 12th in the Birkie. This probably counts for twice as much in her… case because she is from Minocqua. Go Thunderbirds.
What does the coach have to say? Here’s Peter Holmes:
“This season we are super excited to have Will Koch and Elijah Weenig join the team for their first year and were happy to have John Steel Hagenbuch back on the Gold Team this year.
“The summer of training has been really fun and productive. Everyone on the team spent the majority of the summer and fall in Sun Valley training as a large group alongside the SVSEF Collegiate Summer Training Group where we had a lot of really high level Collegiate and World Cup athletes train in Sun Valley with us. This helped us create a really fun, high level training group and helped have a very productive summer while learning from all sorts of different training and skiing styles.
“We spent a couple weeks in Torsby, Sweden where we spent a lot of time skiing in the tunnel. This was a great trip to help us spend more time on snow this summer. Right now we are in Canmore skiing as we start to really prepare for the race season ahead.
“I am super excited for the season. With the Olympics, Paralympics, and World Cup Finals in the U.S., all of our athletes have a lot of opportunity for some pretty incredible achievements. We are hoping to send a couple athletes to the Olympics this year and even more to the World Cup Finals in Lake Placid. Jake and Peter will head to Milan–Cortina for the Paralympics, where they have the chance to win gold medals in a lot of the races. Jake Adicoff competes in the Visually Impaired category and Peter Wolter is one of his guides. Reid Goble from BSF will also be guiding Jake and supporting the U.S. Para Team as well.
“We have a packed season of racing ahead of us. As we head into the first period of SuperTour we are shooting for some really outstanding race performances that I believe the athletes are prepared to achieve. We are looking forward to some good racing in Alaska pretty soon!”
How can you get more information or follow the team? website | Instagram
Read more:
Longtime Friends Peter Wolter And Jake Adicoff Make A Natural Tandem (U.S. Para Nordic)
2026 Olympic Hopeful Sammy Smith Is A Multi-Sport Phenomenon (Team USA)
Get to Know a Skier’s Strava: John Steel Hagenbuch Goes Long. Very Long. (Nordic Insights)
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