By Gavin Kentch
This month’s coverage of [global sporting event in Italy] is supported by Runners’ Edge Alaska. We sincerely appreciate their belief in what we are doing here.
ZIANO DI FIEMME, Italy — This year’s Olympic roster is long since known. We’ve seen the canonical uniform reveals, the parodies of same, and the remixes of the parodies. Athletes have skied on the race courses. Press conferences have been held (I missed today’s for the American nordic skiers because I was still in transit from Venice, sorry. Everyone is asking the men now their thoughts on the absence of women’s noco at the Olympics. The men think that this is bullshit (I paraphrase here). You love to see it.) All that’s left is to race.
But before that happens, kicking off soon with the women’s skiathlon at 1 p.m. local time this Saturday, I want to talk for a second about where skiers come from. Yes, this year’s Olympic team is based almost entirely in Alaska and Vermont. There is probably a reason for this, given (a) my previous research on the subject of skiers’ origins and (b) that’s where APU, SMS, Craftsbury, and Mansfield are located.
But before the largely bimodal, bicoastal distribution into clubs, where do Olympic skiers go to college? And, before that, where do they go to high school?
In an attempt to give skiers’ junior training environment their due, I have compiled background information for all sixteen skiers on this year’s Olympic team. This feels worthy of note at this particular moment, just before the madness of the Games begins in earnest. I cannot express the sentiment that it takes a village without being hopelessly trite, but my goodness, it really does take a village.
What can I tell you from the data? One high school shows up twice (South Anchorage); one university shows up four times (Dartmouth), with honorable mention to the University of Alaska (one to three athletes, depending on how you count this). Three athletes did high school skiing in the Anchorage School District, which is poignant given that Anchorage high school skiing is now on the chopping block due to budget cuts.
Also, and perhaps awkwardly for the marketing material of private ski academies, only one athlete on this roster attended such a school. One other, on my analysis, attended a “normal” private high school. The other fourteen athletes here are all the product of public schools. I didn’t independently check to see if every single one competed for their high school ski team, but also, why would they not have.
Anyway. Here’s the list. Starting with the women first, or at least with Kendall’s photo from the Alaska state meet seven years ago this month, because when you set out to write an article like this and you get back a single historic photo with two of the athletes on this list in their high school days, you pretty much have to lead with that.
Here are Kendall Kramer and Zanden McMullen in February 2019:
And here is the entire women’s team in alphabetical order:
Rosie Brennan
High school: Park City High School
College: Dartmouth College
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Jessie Diggins
High school: Stillwater Area High School, Stillwater, Minnesota
College: has taken some online classes via Westminster University
Club: Stratton Mountain School T2 Team
Lauren Jortberg
High school: Boulder High School
College: Dartmouth College
Club: Mansfield Nordic Pro Team and Centre National d’Entraînement Pierre-Harvey
Julia Kern
High school: Waltham Senior High School, Waltham, Massachusetts
College: Dartmouth College (attended and earned a degree from Dartmouth, though did not ski for them)
Club: Stratton Mountain School T2 Team
Kendall Kramer
High school: West Valley High School, Fairbanks
College: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Novie McCabe
High school: Liberty Bell High School, Winthrop, Washington (see above, bib 681, from 2016)
College: University of Utah
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Sammy Smith
High school: Boise High School
College: Stanford University (does not ski for them, though she does start on the soccer team)
Club: Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation Gold Team
Hailey Swirbul
High school: Basalt High School, Basalt, Colorado
College: University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Men
John Steel Hagenbuch
High school: Sun Valley Community School
College: Dartmouth College
Club: Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation Gold Team
Zak Ketterson
High school: Thomas Jefferson High School, Bloomington, Minnesota
College: Northern Michigan University
Club: Team Birkie
Zanden McMullen
High school: South Anchorage High School
College: Montana State University and Alaska Pacific University
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Ben Ogden
High school: Stratton Mountain School
College: University of Vermont
Club: Stratton Mountain School T2 Team (see above, from 2016)
JC Schoonmaker
High school: North Tahoe High School, Tahoe City
College: University of Alaska Anchorage
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Gus Schumacher
High school: Robert Service High School, Anchorage
College: University of Alaska Anchorage (attended and earned a degree from UAA, though did not ski for them)
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Hunter Wonders
High school: South Anchorage High School
College: Alaska Pacific University
Club: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center
Jack Young
High school: North Country Union High School, Newport, Vermont (see above, from 2019)
College: Colby College
Club: Craftsbury Green Racing Project
Congratulations to all of the villages behind all these athletes.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re at the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
