Right after the New Year, six CNSC juniors travelled to Houghton, Michigan for the 2020 L.L. Bean National Cross Country Championships. Nationals is a huge event, with hundreds of racers gaining race experience, competing in a very deep field, and vying for spots on team to represent the U.S. internationally. According to Coach Anna Schulz, and anyone else you may ask, Nationals are “the country’s biggest races.” Under the tutelage of Anna, five U18’s-Finn Sweet, Aiden Casey, Adrienne Remick, Quincy Massey-Bierman, and Camille Bolduc and two U20’s-Griffin Wright and Abigail Streinz, raced in the first three races of the four race series. Abigail Streinz also stayed to compete in the classic sprint, while the rest of the juniors traveled home.

For the first two races of the series, all athletes, regardless of age, raced against each other. In this article, results are generally included for both overall and age group placement, to further illustrate the enormity and strength of the fields! It can be tricky to see how solid a 40th or 60th or 100th place finish is, until you see how well someone stacked up in their respective age group.

The series opened with fast and furious freestyle sprinting on January 2nd. Finn Sweet qualified 82nd overall and the 19th junior (after the top 30). He ended his day 4th in his quarterfinal. Griffin was the 32nd U20 (136th overall) and Aiden was the 31st U18 (163rd overall). In the women’s qualifier, Abigail was 80th overall, Camille was 84th and Quincy was 85th. Camille and Quincy were 0.12 seconds apart! Adrienne was 137th and the 37th U18. This qualified Abigail, Camille, and Quincy for the junior heats, because they were within the top 30 juniors after the top 30 overall qualifiers. Here, Abigail was 3rd in her quarterfinal and Camille was 5th in her quarterfinal. Quincy was 2nd in her quarterfinal, which moved her on to the semifinal, where she was again 2nd, landing her in the A final. Here, she was 5th!

The next day, freestyle racing continued with 10k and 15k interval start distance races. 

Men’s 15k:

Finn - 75th (7th U18)
Griffin - 86th (18th U20)
Aiden - 194th (41st U18)

Women’s 10k:

Abigail - 72st (14th U20)
Camille - 90th (15th U18)
Quincy - 118th (26th U18)

Everyone had one day to rest up before the classic mass start races.  This races all took place amidst a snow storm, which added even more excitement to chaotic mass start races! The senior athletes did longer distance races, while the juniors all raced 7.5k mass starts. The junior field consisted of U16’s, U18’s, and U20’s. 

Boys 7.5k:

Griffin - 8th (6th U20)
Finn - 16th (7th U18)
Aiden - 55th (25th U18)

Girls 7.5k: 

Abigail - 28th (15th U20)
Quincy - 31st (14th U18)
Camille - 38th (17th U18)
Adrienne - 65th (17th U18)

Finally, Abigail Streinz raced the classic sprint on the last day of the Championships. She finished 37th overall in the qualifier, just outside the top 30 who qualified for senior heats. She finished 3rd in her quarterfinal heat for junior women, but notched a lucky loser spot to make the semifinals, In the semifinal, she placed 4th, and just missed the final but finished 7th for juniors!

As a result of his stellar racing, Finn Sweet was named as the 2nd alternate for the U18 Championships trip to Falun, Sweden in late January. Also of note, CNSC alum Callie Young, now attending Dartmouth College, qualified for World Junior Championships.  These races will take place in Oberwiesenthal, Germany in late February and early March. Congratulations to all of this crew for great performances at such a competitive series, handling the week with “confidence and skill,” according to Coach Anna!

Results.