Palmer girls shine at state ski meet at GPRA

HATCHER PASS — The best Alaska high school skiers descended upon Government Peak Recreation Area for the ASAA/First National Bank State Nordic Ski Championships. Thursday featured a 7.5-kilometer classic race for the boys and a 5k race for the girls as 184 of the state’s best were treated to new snow and warm temperatures on the first day of the state meet. For the first time in decades the state meet is being held in the Mat-Su Valley and for the first time ever at GPRA.

“We just look forward to the next two days being this good, but you know it’s a result of years of volunteerism and working with the local governments and making community stuff happen and that’s what’s cool about it,” said Palmer High head coach Mikey Evans. “Right now what’s happening has demonstrated growth potential. In my view it shows the larger ski community that GPRA is a venue that’s not going away, that it’s legit and now we’ve just got to continue working with volunteers and donors and others to expand it and make it better.”

GPRA opened in 2012 and has become the location of Besh Cup races as well as hosting all three races that Mat-Su Borough School District athletes competed at this year in the GPRA Invite, the Colony Invite and the Region Championship. No competitions between skiers from different school districts had occurred this season until Thursday morning.

The Service boys began the day in dominant fashion, securing three of the top five spots out of the 95 male racers that were each sent out individually in interval starts. Michael Ernhart of Chugiak holds the top time at 21:43. Aaron Power, Alexander Maurer and Joel Power of Service trail Ernhard and Luke Buth of West Valley sits in fifth place. Noah Hanestad of Colony led all Valley boys with a 15th place finish in a time of 25:12. Hanestad’s teammate Jayden Rice finished in 32nd at 26:02. Tom Merritt led the Moose with a 38th place finish at 26:34 followed by Jaxson Lee at 26:43. A total of 95 boys skied in the 7.5km classic race on Thursday morning.

“This is a great place to ski. You’ve got a great view, it’s great hard trails, a few improvements here and there and these guys could bid on Junior Nationals, Arctic Winter Games, the whole nine yards,” said legendary Alaska ski coach Ja Dorris. “I think outdoor sports, we’ve shown across several communities that you can do it safely and our numbers are dropping, trend is good, vaccines are coming. I think we learned from this that outdoor sports is totally safe and totally doable.”

In the girl’s 5k classic race, Service showed their dominance across the sport with three finishers in the top 10. However, Palmer also placed three skiers in the top 10, led by Aila Berrigan in fourth place with a time of 17:30. Katey Houser finished eighth for the Moose at 17:48.0 and Rosie Whittington-Evans finished 10th in 18:02. Meredith Schwartz of Service took the fastest time of the girls afternoon race with 16:58, followed by teammate Tatum Witter. Emily Walsch of Eagle River finished in third and South’s Robyn Miller finished fifth. Lydia Bushey led the Knights with a 27th place finish in 19:28.

Berrigan crossed the finish line exhausted and rested on the ground briefly before getting up and out of her skis and heading back out on the trail to cheer on her teammates. The sound of an excited GPRA crowd was a sound for sore ears on Thursday, as racers and masked, socially distant spectators spread out along the course to cheer on skiers.

“It’s cool to see just the sheer number of people here racing on a day and for this year that’s the biggest thing is just seeing everybody just happy to be racing,” said Colony head coach Mark Strabel.

The state meet was moved to the Valley by ASAA for the first time in numerous decades, although the state meet has been hosted in the Valley previously. The Mat-Su Borough Assembly forwarded their bid to host the 2024 Arctic Winter Games to the AWG International Committee on Feb. 19, including GPRA as a site for future AWG competition. Dorris said the trails provide the needed infrastructure for a flourishing ski community where trails up in Hatcher Pass were inaccessible by school buses and unable to be utilized for major meets. The trails have received near constant improvement including an ADA accessible route that was installed in 2019. Evans hopes that the success of hosting the state meet will result in future upgrades including maintenance facilities and expanded parking. Both Evans and Strabel felt befuddled by attending the state meet just miles from their own homes at their home course.

“I spent over 600 hours on a bulldozer and excavator over the course of two summer basically building all the new comp trails and it’s just not a couple people, there’s a lot of people in the community that have stepped on up here and it’s countless hours that have just gone in here,” said Strabel. “It’s’ a constant maintenance of it and making it better and there’s even bigger plans in store and that’s always good when you can keep on making something better.”