By Gavin Kentch
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2026 Junior Nationals, held last week in Cable at the Birkie Trailhead amidst shall we say variable snow and meteorological conditions, marked the 40th time that the Alaska Cup was awarded to the top-performing divisional team across the week of racing.
This year’s winner was Alaska, for the first time since either 2013 (outright victory) or 2020 (in the lead through two of four race days before Covid shut everything down), depending on what you do with the demi-year of 2020.
Alaska claimed 2,406 points, across four days of racing, to take a clear win over last year’s Alaska Cup winner, Intermountain, which finished with 2,072. New England had 2,017 points to reprise its third-place finish from 2025. Rocky Mountain (1,692 points) and the home team Midwest (1,677 points) were fourth and fifth this year. As an aside, the scoring system seems to have changed from last year; everyone has roughly twice as many points this year as they did in 2025.
I was on post-Olympics vacation in Italy with my family last week, while JNs took place in SkinnySki’s backyard, plus they were actually working then. The single best thing you can do for coverage is therefore to go to this link, then click through for photosets and video. Shoutout to Bruce Adelsman and crew for so ably covering Midwest skiing. The ABSF Facebook page is also incredibly well-stocked with photos.
That said, here are a few embeds with good shots.
Here is one representative race recap video among many (seriously, these are really good; fine work here by SkinnySki).
And here is my take on the top high schools and clubs from this year’s JNs. I have pulled these from a results sub-site and manually retyped them; I cannot warranty that these are official. If you have links to official awards on this, lmk.
Roger Weston Award (top high school)
Women
- South Anchorage
- North Tahoe
- Service (Anchorage)
Men
- South Anchorage
- Colony (Palmer, Alaska)
- Truckee
Top clubs
Overall
- Bridger Ski Foundation
- APU Nordic Ski Center
- Alaska Winter Stars
Women
- Bridger Ski Foundation
- APU Nordic Ski Center
- Tahoe Endurance Club
Men
- Alaska Winter Stars
- Loppet Nordic Racing
- APU Nordic Ski Center
Finally, here is an updated list of all Alaska Cup winners dating back to 1986, since I feel like it is helpful to have all this information in one place and I am not aware of anywhere else online that has all these data compiled in this manner. Where else could you learn that Alaska and New England have a lot of good skiers? #insights
| Year | Winner |
| 1986 | Alaska |
| 1987 | New England |
| 1988 | Alaska |
| 1989 | Alaska |
| 1990 | Alaska |
| 1991 | Alaska |
| 1992 | Alaska |
| 1993 | Alaska |
| 1994 | Alaska |
| 1995 | Alaska |
| 1996 | New England |
| 1997 | Midwest |
| 1998 | Intermountain |
| 1999 | Alaska |
| 2000 | Alaska |
| 2001 | Alaska |
| 2002 | Alaska |
| 2003 | Alaska |
| 2004 | New England |
| 2005 | New England |
| 2006 | New England |
| 2007 | Intermountain |
| 2008 | Alaska |
| 2009 | New England |
| 2010 | New England |
| 2011 | New England |
| 2012 | New England |
| 2013 | Alaska |
| 2014 | New England |
| 2015 | New England |
| 2016 | New England |
| 2017 | New England |
| 2018 | New England |
| 2019 | New England |
| 2020 | Alaska* |
| 2021 | COVID-19 |
| 2022 | New England |
| 2023 | New England |
| 2024 | New England |
| 2025 | Intermountain |
| 2026 | Alaska |
Congratulations to all athletes who qualified to represent their state or region. This is more than I could ever manage, when racing as a junior back in the late Mesozoic Era; I respect this.
Looking ahead: 2027 Junior Nationals will be at ASC Training Center, hosted by Auburn Ski Club. Here is their bid document from 2025 USSS Spring Congress, if you would like to see more information about next year’s races; this bid was accepted by the relevant committee. The race program for spring 2027 would presumptively be an interval-start classic race, skate sprint, mass start skate, and classic relay. Plus a wax tech relay hells yeah.
According to the current regional rotation system, look for Alaska to host (probably Anchorage) in 2028, the East to host in 2029, the Mountain West in 2030, and Central in 2031. That should be enough advance planning for anyone as I write this out in March of 2026.
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