Junior Nationals

Since July 2024, everything that happens at Soldier Hollow, Utah in the ski world has a new direction. Or rather, an endgame. Last summer the International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially awarded the bid for the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City. In an instance, the draw of racing at Soldier Hollow went from racing at what was an Olympic venue to what will be an Olympic venue.

The first step in the journey? For Soldier Hollow, and for the racers that will likely race at Soldier Hollow in 2034, was the 2025 Junior National Ski Championships, held March 10^th-16^th.  It’s a nifty bit of parallel with overtones as big as sublime as the Wasatch Mountains themselves. When you set an ideal to get skiers into the sport with the idea that any of them could go on to be an Olympian, the reality is that the ladder to reach there extends far out. And Junior Nationals is a big ol’ first wrung.

Nothing about Junior Nationals is small, and that is the whole point. New England brought a team of 50 athletes, staffed by 13 coaches, to race skiers from across a continent over the course of four different races. The logistics, the numbers, and the altitude, are all big. As a result, so too are the accomplishments of the skiers that raced. The whole exercise of JNs takes what is by its very essence a solitary pursuit done out in the woods and bands those that love it together into a team to compete with those that love that very same pursuit in wildly different contexts – from Mountain towns out West, old industrial cities in the Midwest, and the wilds of Alaska – to match the mountains of New England, Boston, and the great woods of Vermont too.

The program in 2025 JNs was full bore through 4 different races. Starting with a 7.5 k Classic Individual Start Monday, then running every other day through a Skate Sprint, 15 k (U20), 10 k (U18), and 5 k (U16) Skate Mass Start Friday, and final 4×3.3 k Classic Team Relay on Saturday. With over 400 skiers racing each day, race days stretched from early morning freezes well past when the Utah shined at high noon, warming temperatures to near 60 degrees and turning racecourses into a pile of slush. For skiers, the freeze-thaws common to Utah plus an additional 6,000 feet give or take of altitude posed every kind of challenge ski racing could show you. You could sift through all sorts of anecdotes to stand in for that fact. The one I landed on is that those “Zeros” or “Hairies” that most skiers throw into their ski bags for a race week last minute on the off-chance they’re good for a set of conditions that appears 1% of the time – well at this JNs, we raced on them!

Confronting a full week of racing was a full team effort. From fifty athletes banded together from across four states, to hardworking Age Group coaches that took on the hard work of simply getting racers out to race, to a tireless service team, and a whole cadre of parents and supporters that worked to support New England throughout the week, the whole amalgamation working together may as well been something to viewed down at Symphony Hall.

The orchestra was successful too. Of the 50 skiers that represented Team New England this year, 22 of them skied to All-American honors throughout the week. Nearly half. The journey to that result saw individual efforts throughout the week, and a team that skied better, together, when relay day rolled around.

The tone that led to that accomplishment was set early in the first race, a 7.5 k Classic Individual Start. The first starters at JNs 2025 were the U16 Girls, and for ours, it was also their first JNs start. A Mansfield trio of Acadia Enman, Astrid Longstreth, and Mia Gorman led the way, having travelled thousands of miles from home and still ending up in the results together, Acadia 4^th, Astrid 5^th, and Mia 6^th. The U16 Boys followed, with Jorgen Pirrung leading a fresh group of New England skiers in 16^th place.

The highlight of the first day included Beth McIntosh reaching the high point of the podium, becoming a National Champion in the U20 Girls race, leading a group that also included Maddie Hooker in 3^rd, Caroline Tarmy in 5^th, Margo Nightingale in 6^th, and Sarah Glueck in 8^th. In the U18 Girls, Annie Hanna nearly did the same, coming 2^nd place and leading a New England contingent of All-Americans with Mary Harrington in 8^th and Ella Ronci in 9^th. The Boys efforts were led by James Underwood, who scored his first All-American placing with a 9^th in the U20 Boys.

Sprint Day would see a similar slew of great results. More New England athletes got into the mix after a blazing qualifier, and battled slushy, slow conditions on their way to podiums. The U18s led the way placing two apiece of Boys and Girls into the A-Finals. Niko Cuneo and Jonah Gorman finished 5^th and 6^th, respectively, while Ruth Krebs and Mary Harrington joined in for 4^th and 6^th, respectively. The best New England performance was saved, inadvertently, for last, when the U20 Girls encountered a timing issue in their quarterfinal that left some 4 hours between quarterfinal and Semi-finals. A team effort to keep spirits high in the interim paid off, and when the semi-finals they did go off at 5:30pm, three New England skiers sprinted into the A-Final, Maddie Hooker, Nyla Scott, and Sarah Glueck. Maddie Hooker would push to a National Championship, with Nyla Scott joining the podium in 3^rd place, and Sarah Glueck taking 5^th, while Beth McIntosh took 7^th Overall.

Mass Start Day saw the most Utah of the Utah conditions. What started as frozen ice gave way to deep ruts which made afternoon races nearly as much a portrait of who could stay on their skis as who could push them fast through the snow. Showing her aptitude for both was Mary Harrington, who floated on the slush on her way to a 2^nd place finish in the U18 Girls race. James Underwood would also battle in a hard-fought 15 k in the U20 Boys race to a 5^th place Overall. The U20 Girls did the same to great results, as Margo Nightingale led the way in 4^th, Beth McIntosh took 6^th, and Caroline Tarmy took 7^th.

With strong results mixed in throughout the week, New England went into relay day not knowing what exactly the race would hold, or for that matter, what conditions it would hold, but knowing they had a shot. The bevy of All-American results throughout the week had also been adjoined to a set of near misses. Top 15 or Top 20 placings that when banded together, gave both a strong position, and a strong purpose, for the 4x 3.3. k Mixed Relay teams to chase.

Case-in-point, the first race of the day with the U20s. The New England 1 team featured James Underwood, Margo Nightingale, and Beth McIntosh, all having notched multiple top tens throughout the week. Their fourth skier though, Micah Bruner, had missed out on a top ten by less than a second the previous day. When James and Margo took leg 1 and leg 2, they handed off to Micah in a strong position of 3^rd place off Intermountain and Alaska. On Micah’s leg though, he was tasked with holding that place against multiple, multi-time National Champions. As he wound his way through the hills of Soldier Hollow, it became apparent that he was in for a shot to do just that and handed off to Beth McIntosh for her anchor leg having accomplished it. McIntosh, as a gesture towards the fight her teammates had already showed, continued the same, and picked up another place to lead to a 2^nd place finish for the relay team, notching an All-American finish for the whole team.

The U18s were slated to start after the U20s and had just arrived at Soldier Hollow as the pique of the U20 Relays reached its peak. With that energy to carry forward, the U18s met another challenge to confront too. In the interim of the two races, it had started to snow, hard. Inside the wax cabin, an orbital sander suddenly appeared. Zeros day had met zero hour.

The U18s fielded 2 teams that were in the race from the start. The New England 1 team featured Beckett Cote in the first leg, with Mary Harrington, Joey Sluka, and Annie Hanna following. The New England 2 team saw Fritz Sanders take leg 1, followed by Ella Ronci, Matthew McIntosh, and Lea Pearreard.

Beckett and Fritz stayed on a big first pack as the race got underway, before a sweeping downhill near the finishing stretch saw Beckett slingshot to the front of the pack, with Sanders staying on to hand off to their 2^nd legs in 2^nd and 8^th, respectively. Mary and Ella kept both teams in the mix, while Matt McIntosh battled an early fall in his leg to keep his team in it, and Joey Sluka pushed up a stretched-out pack to put New England 1 firmly in a spot to challenge for a podium. Still, when the two anchor legs of Annie Hanna and Lea Perreard lit out on course there was ground to make up. Annie held 5^th place in a stretched pack to 2^nd. Lea was in 8^th, hoping to bridge to Annie in 5^th. Annie methodically pushed to catch the lead chaser, Far West, and wound into the final kilometer suddenly with a chance to secure a 2^nd place finish for New England 1. Lea, meanwhile, had shaken one skier and caught a pack that included 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th.

Annie lined up over the last downhill to make a move for 2^nd. Then, a loose rut of slush caught her, and she went down. Still, she would regather and push to a 3^rd place, securing one podium finish. On the last climb, Lea battled to keep contact with a pack which would see 2 teams finish in the top 5 All-American placings, and one out. As she wound into the finishing stretch, she pushed to pick off one team, and secure a 5^th place finish for New England 2. The final result, two New England teams on the podium. The U16s would battle through tough conditions in the finale, with the New England 1 team of Eli McEnaney, Astrid Longstreth, Patrick Holland, and Ollie Hanna finishing 8^th.

            Junior Nationals, necessarily as a Championship, always marks an end to a season. By design though, it’s also necessarily iterative. Not only will the skiers that put together a week of racing in Utah go on to race more, but they’ll grow, push, and for some, one day find themselves back at Soldier Hollow. In the iterative process, the racing starts to fade as time goes on. The honors stay affixed to the skiers that earned them, but the vivid memory is in the connections formed, the friends and the skis that skiers go on with them far after the sun has gone down over the Wasatch Mountains, and the slush has given way to grass and green. The organizers, the coaches, the skiers, all made this Junior Nationals a special one. It was a BIG week of racing, at the end of BIG winter. What more could you say?

FULL RESULTS

FULL PHOTOSET FROM GEORGE FORBES