Anchorage Daily News

For a while Monday, Team New England threatened to take the first day of the Junior Olympics cross-country skiing championship by storm.

Dressed in blue racing suits dotted with big white snowflakes, the kids from back east brought blizzard conditions to the almost-bare Kincaid Park ski trails. On a day that featured 48 classical sprint heats (24 quarterfinals, 12 semifinals, six "A" finals and six "B" finals), more often than not it was the skiers sporting snowflakes who set the pace.

Then a pair of Alaskans reminded everyone not to forget the hometown team.

After waiting all day for an Alaskan to capture gold, Amy Glen of Anchorage and Becca Rorabaugh of Fairbanks won the last two races, bringing Alaska's medal count for the day to five -- two fewer than the seven collected by New England.

Each girl's win was remarkable.

Rorabaugh, 18, had never made it to the finals of a sprint race before and had never placed in the top five at Junior Olympics before. Yet there she was Monday, double-poling her way to victory in the Older Junior race and beating people she never dreamed she'd ever beat.

Among those who Rorabaugh defeated in the six-woman Older Junior final: Sadie Bjornsen of the Pacific Northwest region, one of the country's leading juniors who in her last race series skied for the U.S. Ski Team at the World Junior Championships in Italy.

"I've never beaten Sadie in my life," Rorabaugh said. "She's some kind of ski goddess you don't even try to compete with."

But compete -- and beat -- is just what Rorabaugh did. She smoked everyone in her quarterfinal race, dialed things back a bit to finish second in her semifinal, and then worked her way from fourth place to first place to win the final.

Glen, 16, never saw her competition all day. After putting up the fastest time during morning qualifying, Glen won her quarterfinal, semifinal and final by considerable margins.

"I took the lead pretty early every heat and never saw anyone," she said. "But with each progressive heat, they felt closer."

Capitalizing on flat portions of the 1.25-kilometer loop, Glen used one of her strengths -- double-poling -- to hold off any challengers.

"Every time we'd get to a long double-pole stretch, I'd pull away," she said.

Not bad for someone lucky to be alive. Just 18 months ago, Glen was seriously injured when she was hit by a car while roller-skiing. Her injuries were so numerous that reciting them would take longer than the 3 or 4 minutes most skiers needed to race around the Kincaid sprint course.

Yet here she is today, a national champion.

"I have some cool scars and sometimes my hip aches at random times," she said. "But it seems pretty far away for me. It had effects on me last season. This year, it doesn't have any."

Glen, who skis for Alaska Winter Stars, and Rorabaugh, who skis for APU, were among six champions crowned on a day dominated by Alaska and New England skiers. Alaska and New England claimed 12 of the 18 medals awarded.

Other gold medalists included New England's Kristin Halvorsen in Junior II girls (ages 14-15) and Alex Howe in Older Junior boys (ages 18-19), Mid-Atlantic's Steve Mangan in Junior II boys and Midwest's Joe Dubay in Junior I boys (ages 16-17).

Other Alaska medalists included three Winter Stars skiers -- Karina Packer and Scott Patterson, who both took second place among Junior II skiers, and Tyler Kornfield, third among Junior I boys.

That any medals were awarded at all is worthy of some kind of medal for race organizers and volunteers from the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage.

They turned rain and slush into classical tracks for a sprint loop that held up under extraordinary use in temperatures that hovered in the high 30s. In morning preliminaries, 402 racers attacked the course; in the afternoon, 48 heats tested it.

"It's still holding up, considering how warm it is," Kornfield said after his fourth trip around the loop.

The less-than-ideal snow conditions forced organizers to create a new loop over the weekend. Originally set around the stadium area, rain and warm weather turned the stadium into an icy, slushy, unskiable mess. Everyone's hoping the weather cools a bit in the coming days so the stadium can be used for the start and finish of the remaining three races, set for Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

For now, though, the snowflake-clad New Englanders are the most visible sign that it's winter at Kincaid Park.

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.

Junior Olympics

Classical sprint race

(No times are kept in sprint races. "A" finals decide 1st place through 6th place, "B" finals determine 7th place through 12th place)

Girls A final -- 1) Becca Rorabaugh, Alaska; 2) Parker Tyler, New England; 3) Mali Noyes, Intermountain; 4) Sadie Bjornsen, Pacific Northwest; 5) Ky Eiben, Alaska; 6) Lauren Fritz, Alaska.

Boys A final -- 1) Alex Howe, New England; 2) Doug Debold, Midwest; 3) Reid Pletcher, Intermountain; 4) Miles Havlick, Intermountain; 5) Reese Hanneman, Alaska; 6) Ryan Scott, Rocky Mountain.

Girls B final -- 7) Melanie Hoffman, Midwest; 8) Mae Foster, New England; 9) Rachelle Kanady, Alaska; 10) Maddie Talkington, New England; 11) Martina Stonawska, Pacific Northwest; 12) Christina Gillis, Alaska.

Boys B final -- 7) Erick Romig, Alaska; 8) Noah Brautigam, New England; 9) Karl Schauer, Alaska; 10) Ian Mallams, Rocky Mountain; 11) Graham Egan, New England; 12) Erik Anderson, Intermountain.

Junior I (born in 1990-91)

Girls A final -- 1) Amy Glen, Alaska; 2) Jessie Diggins, Midwest; 3) Sophie Caldwell, New England; 4) Stephanie Crocker, New England; 5) Kate Dolan, Intermountain; 6) Hilary Rich, New England.

Boys A final -- 1) Joe Dubay, Midwest; 2) Sam Tarling, New England; 3) Tyler Kornfield, Alaska; 4) David Norris, Alaska; 5) Eric Packer, Alaska; 6) Andrew Dougherty, Alaska.

Girls B final -- 7) Jamie Bronga, Alaska; 8) Megan Killigrew, New England; 3) Casey Kutz, Pacific Northwest; 4) Rebecca Konieczny, Intermountain; 5) Elizabeth Guiney, Intermountain; 6) Keely Levins, New England.

Boys B final -- 7) Chase Marston, New England; 8) Chris Bowler, Midwest; 9) Ethan Dreissigacker, New England; 10) Alex Schulz, New England; 11) George Cartwright, High Plains.

Junior II (born in 1992-93)

Girls A finals -- 1) Kristin Halvorsen, New England; 2) Karina Packer, Alaska; 3) Tara Geraghty-Moats, New England; 4) Isabel Caldwell, New England; 5) Elizabeth Anderson, New England; 6) Carly Wynn, Mid-Atlantic.

Boys A final -- 1) Steve Mangan, Mid-Atlantic; 2) Scott Patterson, Alaska; 3) Bridger Tyler, New England; 4) Nick Michaud, New England; 5) Eric Ryan, Alaska. DQ'd -- David Sinclair, New England.

Girls B final -- 7) Annie Liotta, Alaska; 8) Joanne Reid, Far West; 9) Summer Ellefson, Mid-West; 10) Gage Fichter, New England; 11) Stella Holt, Intermountain; 12) Kinsey Loan, Alaska.

Boys B final -- 6) Johnny Springer, Intermountain; 7) Logan Hanneman, Alaska; 8) Daniel Sundali, Intermountain; 9) Tanner Putt, Intermountain; 10) Silas Talbot, Alaska; 11) Sam Dougherty, Alaska.

Want more? Stay on top of results, schedules, changing course maps and what visiting teams say about skiing in warm Anchorage:

www.anchoragenordicski.com

blogs.fasterskier.com

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