Alaska teenagers Brook Lentfer and Reuben Jeffers are in Switzerland this week for the World Junior Championships for ski cross, a fast-paced sport that can shake your nerves and rattle your brain. Which is why 19-year-old Lentfer channels rock-n-roll legend Jerry Lee...
Black-Smith, Bethard & Carlson
Friday was a big day for a couple of Alaska skiers. In Wisconsin, Anchorage’s Finn Dudley scored a hat trick at the U.S. Junior National Championships. And on the alpine slopes of Utah Olympic Park, Ella Bromee became UAA’s sixth skier in history to become a five-time...
Katie Rowekamp’s life as a ski racer began on a hardwood floor in her family’s Girdwood home. She’s come a long way in the short time since then. Rowekamp, 16, trains at the prestigious Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont — the same school three-time Olympic champion...
Andrew Kurka was voted our Alaska Athlete of the Week after collecting two medals — silver and bronze — at two World Cup downhill para alpine races in Saalbach, Austria. The sit-skier from Palmer hopes to carry the momentum into his 4th Paralympics in March. Kurka...
Andrew Kurka is headed to his fourth Paralympics, and for the first time in a gutsy, gritty and golden career, he isn’t going there at breakneck speed. “No risks,” he said. “My approach to these Games is a strong focus on staying healthy and uninjured.” Make no...
For freeride skiers, success comes in degrees. In a sport that rewards daring maneuvers in rugged terrain, a 360-degree spin is a milestone move for young riders. Eighteen-year-old Gus Olson of Anchorage doesn’t remember how old he was when he landed his first 360,...
Wasilla’s Nathaniel Hunt called his shot and owned it. The 27-year-old decimated his competition in the intermediate giant slalom in alpine skiing, clocking 1 minute, 13.03 seconds to become world champion at the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Turin, Italy....
The smartest skier at the NCAA Championships is also one of the fastest. A couple of days after being honored for boasting the highest GPA at this year’s championships, Carmen Nielssen of UAA raced to fourth place in the women’s giant slalom Friday at Dartmouth Skiway...
The UAA ski team added three more All-America citations to its lengthy honor roll Wednesday on the opening day of the NCAA Ski Championships. Ella Bromee, Carmen Nielssen and Jan Ronner each racked up a top-10 finish in the slalom race to earn NCAA All-America status....
Andrew Kurka, Alaska’s seemingly indestructible Paralympic champion, is back on the disabled list. And like every other time something like this has happened, he vows, like the Terminator, that he’ll be back. Days before the Para Alpine World Championships were set to...
There was something for everyone last week when UAA’s alpine ski team opened its season in Colorado. For junior Ella Bromlee, there were back-to-back second-place finishes in the slalom. For all of the Seawolves, there was an introduction to giant slalom — a Wednesday...