High school seniors Hannah Peterson and Haakon Sigurslid posted All-American finishes to lead an enthusiastic contingent of Durango Nordic Club racers at the 2014 Junior National Nordic Championships in Stowe, Vt., last week.
More than 400 skiers, the best in the country ages 14 to 19, put skis to snow in four separate races. The top 10 finishers in each age and gender category were named All-American.
Peterson and Sigurslid each took that honor in three of their races.
Though Peterson was favored in the skate race on Friday and Sigurslid the sprints on Wednesday, it was the classic distance race on Monday in which the two shined brightest. Sigurslid was fourth (not counting a guest skier from the Czech Republic) and Peterson fifth.
In the sprints, Sigurslid made a tactical error and that, together with a sniffle, took him from second to sixth, and he never recovered.
Peterson was eighth in her sprint, impressive for a woman who hardly ever qualified for the heats in past years.
Peterson also took eighth in the freestyle event while Sigurslid anchored his Rocky Mountain Nordic relay team to bronze Saturday.
Though five other younger women from the team – Avra Saslow, Maggie Wigton, Marit May, Katja Freeburn and Anna Fake – did not achieve the same lofty results, this was an education for them as to how fast one must race to place in a high-profile, pressure-packed event as well as an opportunity to make friends and memories.
These racers trained all winter after school in the dark, devoting enormous amounts of time so they could race – usually in solitude without an audience. It was different in Stowe. People lined the course several deep and enthusiastically cheered their favored racers.
During the regular season, skiers from Vail, Gunnison, Crested Butte, Steamboat, Aspen, Breckenridge and Boulder all competed against Durango for glory on snow, but in Stowe, these members of the Rocky Mountain Division were teammates, and tight ones.
Fake placed the best among the younger Durango skiers – 16th in the freestyle and 17th in the classic distance races, amazing for this first-year Nordic racer who had both alpine racing and cross-country running in her previous skill set.
The other women came in 25th (Freeburn in the sprints), 27th and 28th (Wigton in the distances races), 30th (May in the classic) and further back in their various other races.
