Usually, it’s a little more than a ski’s width that separates Annie Hanna and Ruth Krebs as they both pursue our sport. To be precise, all that’s usually between them is the Connecticut River, as Annie the New Hampshirite skiing for Ford Sayre and Ruth the Vermonter skiing for Craftsbury have progressed through the Bill Koch League and into the ranks of our regular Eastern Cup and Junior Nationals racers.
When you’re half a world away in Norway though, even a big river like the Connecticut seems like a quaint little stream, and for Annie and Ruth, that’s meant that as they’ve donned the US Ski Team for the first time, as members of the National Nordic Foundation‘s U18 Nordic Nation’s Trip, they’ve formed a cohesive unit: the New Englanders!
The U18 Nordic Nation’s Trip is the first international trip sponsored by US Ski and Snowboard in the national development pathway. In other words, it’s a keystone moment where all the principles and love of skiing that we as a ski community try to impart to our skiers from the time they are Lollipoppers gets converted to them being out in the international ski world representing not just New England, but the whole of the American skiing community. Both Annie and Ruth earned their place on the U18 squad by placing in the top 6 of all American U18 skiers at the US Cross Country Ski National Championships in Anchorage, AK in January.
This year, the U18 Nordic Nation’s Trip centered on Gjovik, Norway, and the racing was a particularly high caliber, with the Norwegian Senior and Junior National Championships included in the calendar. That meant Annie and Ruth were set to make their first starts in international skiing with a field of skiers from that country that is pretty famously good at nordic skiing (some would say they even invented it!)
As if that wasn’t high enough a caliber, in the first block of races, the U18 skiers raced up into the U23 category, with Annie and Ruth yielding two of the top three American finishes, Annie in 1st in 27th place Overall, and Ruth in 3rd in 34th.
After another block of Senior racing, the Americans moved into the Junior National Championship portion of the week. JNs, Norwegian addition, kicked off with a Sprint, with Annie and Ruth leading the American team as 1st and 2nd skiers, Annie in 4th place Overall, and Ruth in 13th.
Through and through, Annie and Ruth put on a pretty good showing for New England, and did so showing some of what we pride ourselves on racing in the East. Jumping in a U23 Championship is a little easier when you’ve already got the experience of racing alongside seasoned Carnival skiers at home. And knowing how to push fast on fast snow in a Sprint? Well, both Ruth and Annie are pretty familiar with the miracles of manmade snow that their home clubs at Craftsbury and Oak Hill can pull off.
More so than just performance, we are eager to celebrate our New England athletes when they go out into the world and show that the bonds formed around a common love of our sport back home here can take you around the world and back, and do it, on skis, pretty fast too.
Congratulations to Ruth and Annie, and to the whole U18 American team!
