Alaska skiers finished up a dominant performance Monday at the U.S. Cross Country Championships at Kincaid Park in Anchorage.
The championships had four men’s races and four women’s races, and skiers with Alaska ties earned national titles in all those races.
The one blemish came Sunday, when Sweden’s Hedda Baangman, who skis for the University of Colorado, won the women’s 20-kilometer, mass-start classic race. Foreign skiers can’t win national titles, though, so runner-up Caitlin Patterson, who grew up in Anchorage but now lives and trains in Vermont, was awarded the national title.
Monday, Patterson made it a clean sweep of four national titles by winning the classic sprint race.
Reese Hanneman, who now lives in Anchorage and skis for Alaska Pacific University, won the men’s classic sprint Monday. Hanneman’s victory meant that all four of the men’s national titles went to Alaska Pacific University skiers. APU skier Tyler Kornfield was second in the sprint.
Soldotna high school graduate Sadie Fox, who now skis for the University of Alaska Anchorage, made it to the women’s quarterfinals before being eliminated. Kenai Central’s Addison Gibson qualified 56th and did not make the women’s quarterfinals, but did make the quarterfinals of a separate sprint for juniors and was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
In men’s qualifying, Kenai Central’s Karl Danielson was 59th and did not make the quarterfinals of the men’s sprints, but he did make the quarterfinals of a separate sprint for juniors before being eliminated in the quarterfinals.
