Novie McCabe
In the U.S. Ski Team’s final race of the cross-country season, Scott Patterson celebrated the end of his career with a medal and Novie McCabe showed she’s just getting started.
McCabe, a 22-year-old in her first season with the Alaska Pacific University nordic program, captured a national championship for the second time in five days Tuesday in Duluth, Minnesota.
And Patterson, a 32-year-old who recently announced his retirement after two Olympics and several years with APU, claimed a bronze medal in his final race as a member of the national team.
Tuesday’s 40-kilometer race marked the end of a solid career for Patterson and signaled a promising post-collegiate career for McCabe.
Patterson was part of the lead pack for the 10-lap, mass-start race, held on a short loop in wet, heavy snow.
Near the end, Johnny Steel Hagenbuch of Idaho and Jake Brown of Vermont broke away to finish 1-2, with Hagenbuch taking gold by 1.2 seconds in a time of 1 hour, 39 minutes, 37.4 second.
Not far behind were Patterson and Antoine Cyr of Canada. Cyr finished 6.7 seconds behind the winner and half a second ahead of Patterson in third place, but the bronze medal went to Patterson because only Americans can win medals at the U.S. championships.
Scott Patterson
Patterson has been a member of the national team for several years, and his last World Cup race came earlier this month when he placed 15th in a 50K in Sweden. In recent years he has combined his World Cup career with a job in Anchorage as a mechanical engineer.
Two of his career highlights came at the Olympics — in 2022, when he placed eighth in the 50K and 11th in the 30K skiathlon, and in 2018, when he finished 11th in the 50K.
In the off-season, Patterson is a record-setting mountain runner.
On Tuesday he was one of five Alaskans to finish in the top 15 — Zanden McMullen was seventh, Hunter Wonders was 10th, Luke Jager was 12th and JC Schoonmaker was 15th. All ski for APU.
McCabe won the women’s 40K in 1:39:37.4, more than two minutes ahead of the runnerup. APU’s Renae Anderson placed 11th.
It was a statement victory for McCabe, who ended the season on a roll.
She came into the Duluth races 10 days after placing 11th in a 20K in Sweden, one of the best World Cup results of her young career.
She won three times in four races in Duluth, beginning with a 10K classic victory Thursday in an event that was an FIS race but not a national championship race.
The next three races were for national titles, and McCabe won two of them — the classic sprint and the 40K freestyle.
The other was Sunday’s team sprint, the event that made Anchorage’s Kikkan Randall an Olympic champion in 2018. This is the first time it’s been contested at the national championships, and McCabe and Anderson claimed the silver medal in the women’s race.
The men’s team sprint was an all-Alaska show. McMullen and Schoonmaker grabbed the gold by beating Jager and Michael Earnhart by two seconds.
Schoonmaker finished the Duluth series with golds in the team sprint and classic sprint. McMullen collected gold in the team sprint and silver in the classic sprint.