Skiers from Alaska ruled the U.S. Cross Country Championships on Sunday.
They won three of the four races, claimed seven of the 12 medals and heavily populated the top 10 in the mass-start classic races in Houghton, Michigan.
Erik Bjornsen and Hailey Swirbul of Anchorage won national championships with victories in the men’s 30-kilometer race and the women’s 20K, and Luke Jager of Anchorage won the junior men’s 10K race.
Swirbul nipped Anchorage’s Caitlin Patterson by one second to give Alaska gold and silver in the mass-start women’s race. It was the third medal in three races for both women.
Jager, a freshman at the University of Utah, led a 1-2-3 Alaska finish in the junior men’s race. He won by 5.1 seconds over JC Schoonmaker, who edged Zanden McMullen by four-tenths of a second to take the silver medal. Schoonmaker is a sophomore at UAA, and McMullen trains with the Alaska Pacific University program. He was last year’s high school Skimeister as a senior at South High.
In the 7.5K junior women’s race, West Valley High senior Kendall Kramer, a two-time high school Skimeister, placed third.
By edging Patterson, Swirbul won her second national title in four days. Swirbul, who came to Anchorage in 2016 for the skiing, won her first gold medal in Thursday’s freestyle sprint race and added a bronze medal in Friday’s 10K freestyle race.
Patterson, a Service High grad and 2018 Olympian who trains in Vermont, has a complete set of medals from the Houghton races – gold in the 10K free, silver in the 20K classic and bronze in the freestyle sprint.
Bjornsen, a two-time Olympian who spent the first part of the season racing World Cup events in Europe, won the men’s 30K by 3.5 seconds.
It was the sixth national title of his career and the second medal at this year’s national championships for Bjornsen, an APU skier who earned a share of third place in the 15K freestyle Friday. He finished eighth in the freestyle sprint.
Bjornsen was the only Alaskan on the podium for Sunday’s 30K, but Gus Schumacher came close.
Schumacher, the winner of the freestyle sprint and the silver medalist in the 15K freestyle, finished fourth Sunday. The Alaska Winter Stars skier was more than 20 seconds behind Bjornsen but only 4.2 seconds off the podium.
Rosie Frankowski of APU, a 2018 Olympian, registered her first top-five finish Sunday. It was a lonely finish – she was 37 seconds behind the fourth-place finisher and more than a minute ahead of the sixth-place finisher. Frankowski had a seventh-place finish in Friday’s 10K.
Tyler Kornfield of APU placed seventh in the 30K, matching his finish in the 20K. He placed 15th in the sprint.
Other top-10 finishes for Alaska came from:
-- Seventh-place Becca Rorabaugh and 10th-place Emma Tarbath in the 20K women’s race;
-- Seventh-place Kai Meyers, ninth-place Everett Cason and 10th-place Alexander Maurer in the 10K junior men’s race;
-- Eighth-place Garvee Tobin and 10th-place Adrianna Proffitt in the 7.5K junior women’s race.
The championships wrap up Tuesday with a classic sprint race.