Strong Finish for Big Green on Final Day of NCAA Skiing Championships

Saturday, March 11

Lake Placid, N.Y.

Dartmouth College

NCAA Day Four

2023 All-Americans in Nordic classical: Jasmine Drolet, Ava Thurston, John Steel Hagenbuch and Jack Lange

The classical All-Americans (l-r): Jasmine Drolet, Ava Thurston, John Steel Hagenbuch and Jack Lange

Photo by: NCAA

Strong Finish for Big Green on Final Day of NCAA Skiing Championships

3/11/2023 1:45:00 PM | Skiing

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Four All-America performances helped Dartmouth end up fifth overall

By: Rick Bender

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Four All-America performances by Dartmouth skiers highlighted the final day of the 2023 NCAA Skiing Championships hosted by St. Lawrence as Dartmouth finished up in fifth place with 335.5 points, a mere 7.5 behind Vermont in fourth. Utah took home the team title with 526 points for its fourth consecutive championship, comfortably ahead of Colorado (491.5) and Denver (416.5).

Sophomore John Steel Hagenbuch, the EISA Men's Nordic Rookie of the Year, was the Big Green's top skier on the day, finishing second in the men's 20K classic with his time of 54:59.3 — just 4.7 seconds off the pace — to earn his second first-team All-America honor of the week. Making his claim as a second-team All-American was freshman Jack Lange as he crossed the tape in ninth after starting toward the back of the pack in the mass start. And with sophomore Luke Allan placing 13th in 57:47.8, Dartmouth amassed 77 points to top the field.

The Big Green women provided a solid day of skiing as well with freshman Ava Thurston — the EISA Women's Nordic Rookie of the Year — picking up her second honor as a second-team All-American by taking seventh in the women's 20K classic with a time of 1:02:37.3. The next skier to cross the finish line was another Dartmouth skier in sophomore Jasmine Drolet in 1:02:53.4 to grab her place on the All-America Second Team as well.

An overcast day gradually blossomed into plenty of sunshine, with temperatures just below freezing at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, making for a perfect day of skiing. The Big Green saved their best performance of the week for last with the men's 20K classic.

Hagenbuch, wearing bib number eight, established himself with the lead pack from the start, and after the first of the four laps was sitting sixth. By the midpoint of the race, the group at the front had dwindled to six with Hagenbuch right in the middle. Coming out of the third lap, he was right on the heels of Harvard's Rémi Drolet (older brother of Jasmine), both of whom started to pull away from Vermont's Jacob Nystedt to make it a two-man race. Hagenbuch made his move and opened up a seven-second lead with 2.5K remaining, but Drolet was able to overtake Hagenbuch down the stretch to win the gold.

Lange had a more difficult path to the top 10, wearing bib number 28 and starting toward the back of the group. It took more than a complete lap to extricate himself from the throng, and when he posted the fastest 2.5K time to finish the second lap, he had boosted himself into 11th place. He was still in 11th after three laps, but his closing kick pushed him ahead of two skiers to finish in ninth. The master of consistency on the day was Allen, who rarely wavered from just outside the top 10 the entire race, reaching each checkpoint somewhere between 11th and 16th.

Earlier in the day, Thurston opened in the front line of the mass start wearing bib number three with Drolet on the very back line wearing 38 and Seemann in the middle (17). By the end of the first 5K loop, Thurston found herself in seventh place and never wavered from that position for the remainder of the race, with more than 30 seconds between her and Jasmine Lyons of New Hampshire in sixth place.

Drolet, meanwhile, had to bide her time early in the race like Lange on the men's side as she navigated through the crowd. She was able to make a move during the second half of the first loop, joining the second pack of skiers in 13th. On the second loop, she maintained that pattern, losing a bit of ground on the uphill climbs while blazing forward as the course wound its way back down, elevating herself into 10th. Drolet picked up the pace a bit on the climb the third time through, and no one was faster on the back half of the lap to move into eighth, where she remained and finished 16 seconds behind her teammate Thurston.

For Seemann, she was in 30th place after the first loop, gained a couple of spots on the second and was 27th going into the final lap. The sophomore had enough in the tank to push hard over the final stretch, passing two more skiers to finish 25th overall in 1:06.27.3. The three Big Green skiers provided 54 points, third most behind only Utah and Colorado and two more than Vermont.

Utah's Novie McCabe, who won Thursday's 5K freestyle, completed the sweep by taking the gold by more than 18 seconds. The Utes had three of the top five skiers to win the event going away with 103 points, while Dartmouth (54) placed third, two points ahead of Vermont.

The NCAA Skiing Championships will be held next year in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, with the University of Colorado serving as host, before the event comes to the Upper Valley when Dartmouth hosts in 2025.

Notes: Dartmouth ended up with the third-most All-America performances over the four days with nine, trailing only Utah and Colorado with 13 apiece … Hagenbuch and men's alpine skier Oscar Zimmer became the first Big Green teammates to make the All-America First Team in both of their respective events since Katherine Ogden (Nordic) and Tanguy Nef (alpine) accomplished the feat in 2018.