The career milestones keep coming for Chelsea Holmes.
The Girdwood skier won her first national cross-county ski championship last week, and now she's headed to her first World Championships.
Holmes was one of five Alaska Pacific University skiers named Wednesday to the 17-member team that will represent the United States in Lahti, Finland, for the Feb. 22-March 5 championships.
Four APU skiers account for nearly half of the nine-member women's team — besides first-timer Holmes, Kikkan Randall earned her ninth World Championship selection, Sadie Bjornsen claimed her fourth and Rosie Brennan picked up her second.
APU's Erik Bjornsen, a member of the eight-skier men's team, was named to the World Championship team for the third time.
Holmes is the only woman on the team who will be making her world debut. She's part of a strong women's squad that includes three of the four American skiers to ever win World Championship medals — Randall, Jessie Diggins and Caitlin Gregg.
"I am beyond thrilled," Holmes said in a press release from APU. "This was absolutely a goal of mine but also completely unexpected, as the U.S. women have an incredibly strong team, which of course makes it that much sweeter."
[Girdwood's Holmes captures first national ski crown]
Erik Flora, the director of APU's nordic ski center and the coach of the program's elite-level ski team, said the number of APU skiers on the team is a product of their training, which includes multiple on-snow summertime camps at Eagle Glacier in the Chugach Mountains.
"Our athletes are continuing to raise the bar," he said "The hard work, attention to detail and countless hours of training is paying off. We have spent most of the year pushing the limits, from time on Eagle Glacier skiing in the summer to refining race skills on the World Cup and North American Super Tour."
Randall, Brennan and the Bjornsen siblings are regulars on the World Cup tour, and their selections to the world team were pretty much expected.
Randall, a two-time World Championship medalist, appears to be getting stronger by the week in her comeback season after the birth of her son last year, Sadie Bjornsen is coming off her first individual podium finish in a World Cup race, and Brennan and Erik Bjornsen have both registered World Cup points by placing in the top 30 in a handful of races this season.
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Holmes skied her way onto the World Championship team with strong domestic results this season. After doing well in SuperTour and Nor-Am competitions in the Lower 48 and Canada, she had a superb showing at the recent national championships in Utah, where she captured the gold medal in the 20-kilometer classic race and silver in the 10K freestyle race.
"This is undoubtedly the strongest team that the USA has ever fielded at a major championships," Chris Grover, head coach of the U.S. Ski Team, said in a press release. "We have many veterans with World Cup podium experience in this group — athletes that are at the heights of their careers and their racing abilities. We have an experienced staff that knows how to manage the challenges of the major events and a world-class service team that has been making great skis all season long. Lahti will be the perfect setting for the USA to showcase our newfound strength in cross country ski racing."
Besides the five APU skiers, two Anchorage health-care providers will be part of the U.S. Ski Team's medical team in Lahti — Greg Schumacher, an orthopedist with the Anchorage Fracture and Orthopedic Clinic, and Zuzana Rogers, a physical therapist with Advanced Physical Therapy.