JC Schoonmaker
During a fabulous weekend of World Cup ski racing for the U.S. Ski Team, Anchorage skier Luke Jager said watching his teammates hit new heights was like witnessing man walk on the moon.
Yes, a touch of hyperbole. But the American efforts really were out of this world.
Led by Anchorage skier JC Schoonmaker’s bronze medal in the men’s classic sprint on Saturday and Minnesota skier Jessie Diggins’ victory in the women’s freestyle race on Sunday, U.S. skiers continued to impress.
In two days of racing in Ostersund, Sweden, the Americans boasted four men and women in the top five of the sprint race and four in the top 15 of the 10K races. Diggins and Anchorage’s Rosie Brennan turned in top-5 results in both races to leave Ostersund as the World Cup’s No. 1 and No. 2 women in the overall rankings.
It was the third straight weekend of strong results for the United States, and the result that had everyone buzzing was Schoonmaker’s medal, the first of his young career.
Schoonmaker, 23, is from California but has spent the last several years training in Alaska — he was a two-time NCAA All-American during four seasons at UAA, and this is his second season with Alaska Pacific University’s vaunted club team.
He had the best day of his career in the sprint race, where he and teammate Ben Ogden of Vermont finished third and fourth, respectively. According to the U.S. Ski Team, the race marked the first time two U.S. men made it to a sprint final.
JC Schoonmaker. Photo by Nordic Focus
“This first podium just means so much to me that it’s hard to even describe,” Schoonmaker said in comments shared by the U.S. Ski Team. “It’s been a dream of mine for a long time so to get up there today and have Ben really close right with me is just such a sweet feeling.
“To be a part of this team right now is an honor. Ben and I have both been looking to make it to the final now for a while and both of us getting it done on the same day is a dream scenario. I’ve been excited for U.S. skiing and U.S. men’s skiing for a while now but today has really stoked the flame and I feel more motivated to keep it up and more proud to be a part of it than ever before.”
A day later, after claiming her 16th career World Cup victory, Diggins sounded more like a fan-girl than the phenom she is.
“Today was for the boys,” she said. “Seeing Ben and JC make their first ever final and seeing them fist-bump across the line, that was so cool. I’m also proud of how Rosie and I skied, but this was all about the boys this weekend.”
Brennan, who placed fourth in the sprint (after a Swedish coach appeared to interfere with her late in the finals) and fifth in the 10K, race, used a series of adjective to describe the breakthrough by Schoonmaker and Ogden.
“Watching our men just destroy it in the finals was so incredibly inspiring and heartwarming and exciting and really uplifting,” she said after her Sunday race.
Sophia Laukli and Rosie Brennan cooling down post-race. Photo by Alayna Sonnesyn
And then there was the analysis by Jager, who finished 52nd and 58th in the two races.
“I tell myself nothing else in the world matters when your team is doing what they’re doing right now,” he said in an email to the media. “I felt like I was watching the Moon Landing live during the men’s final. And Jessie and Rosie just casually both being top 3 in the overall?! These people show us over and over again that if you do your best every day and you are nice to everyone, good things will happen.”
To recap, here are the many good things that happened for Americans in Ostersund:
- Zanden McMullen of Anchorage, 22, had another career-best result by placing 27th in the 10K. McMullen’s previous best came two weeks earlier when he finished 28th in a 20K; he was also a member of last week’s fifth-place relay team.
- Brennan, 34, continued her season-long streak of top-5 results by placing fourth in the sprint and fifth in the 10K. She said she may have picked the wrong skis for Sunday’s 10K, “but I fought the whole way,” she said. Diggins won the race by 23 seconds, with Brennan 47.5 seconds off her pace.
- Schoonmaker became one of a handful of U.S. men to reach the podium in the history of sprint racing; the last one was Simi Hamilton in 2017. Sprint victories went to Norway’s Johannes Klaebo (Schoonmaker was 4.86 seconds behind Klaebo and 1.45 seconds away from the silver medal) and Sweden’s Emma Ribom (Brennan was a little more than two seconds behind Ribom and 1.23 seconds away from a podium spot).
- Diggins and Brennan were joined in the top 10 of the 10K by Sophia Laukli of Maine, who placed a career-best 8th.
- Johnny Hagenbuch of Idaho was a career-best 13th in the men’s 10K, finishing 66.6 seconds behind winner Harald Oestburg Amundson of Norway. Joining him in the top 30 were McMullen and Anchorage’s Gus Schumacher, who finished 21st.
Schumacher has scored World Cup points in all four distance races this season (he’s been 16 twice, 21st once and 22nd once) and said he is itching to move up in the results.
“I feel like I’m getting a little impatient for better results, but I also know I gotta take my time and be happy with it being really stable solid feelings and results right now,” he said. “As long as it stays basically like this it won’t take much to have a really good one I think.”
High school racing
Two weeks into the high school racing seasons, four skiers and two schools have collected victories.
In the season-opener Service Snowball Sprint, the West Eagles swept the team titles. In Saturday’s Chugiak Stampede, the South Wolverines scored a sweep.
West’s Murphy Kimball and Service’s Olivia Soderstrom took wins in the 2.8-kilometer freestyle sprint on the Service High trails. Runnerup honors went to Service’s Elias Soule among the boys and West’s Berit Meyers among the girls.
In the 7.5-kilometer classic at Chugiak, West’s Greta Bochenek edged South’s Alisa Elliot by three-tenths of a second to win in 25:59.9. Miyana Kam-Magruder was third in 26:02.4.
In the boys race, Jack Leveque of Service finished in 21:43.1 to take an 8.5-second win over Grayson Stanek-Alward. Third place went to Service’s Elias Oswald in 21:56.5.