After the final qualifying race was completed and the season points totals were calculated, Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation nordic director Dan Simoneau texted other MBSEF staff members with the good news: Thirteen of their athletes would be going to the junior national championships.

But on second look, Simoneau realized he had made a mistake. MBSEF actually had 14 skiers qualify for the national meet, which will be held March 3-10 in Soldier Hollow, Utah.

“Too many to count,” Simoneau joked last week. “We’re pretty excited about it.”

Another four qualifiers are Bend Endurance Academy skiers, which means more than half of the athletes representing the Pacific Northwest Ski Association region at nationals train with Bend-based clubs. Skiers earn points based on their performance against their age-group competitors at eight qualifying races hosted by various PNSA clubs during the course of the winter, and the top 34 points earners land a spot at the national championships.

Simoneau said he had just one national qualifier during his first season at MBSEF in 2009, and it took a few years for that number to start to tick up.

“I think last year we had nine, but we’re not just growing in quantity, we’re growing in quality, too,” Simoneau said. “Max Millslagle was on my second team, and he was my only skier (at nationals) that year. Now he coaches for me, and he made the comment, ‘Not only are you bringing 14, they’re all better than I was.’”

Simoneau said Bend nordic skiers do have a number of advantages, including, usually, a long winter season and nearby trails with reliable snow cover, as well as numerous opportunities for summer training. But even large ski clubs see ebbs and flows in participation and success based on who joins and moves up in the program, and right now MBSEF has a particularly strong contingent of U16 girls, including sisters Isabel and Fiona Max, Annie McColgan and Sarah Kilroy. The four girls all qualified for junior nationals and took first through fourth place for their high school teams at the Oregon Interscholastic Ski Racing Association nordic state championships at Mount Bachelor this weekend.

“The (PNSA) U16 girls were really close last year, and that was really fun,” said Isabel Max, who will be making a repeat appearance at nationals. “Even though we all come from different parts of PNSA, we have such a great team dynamic. And I think there’s a huge part of PNSA. For newcomers (to the meet), there’s nothing to stress about. You have so much support from the team. You go out there, and most of the racers tend to do well because of that.”

BEA nordic director Bernie Nelson said her organization had a similar group of U18 boys last year, accounting for most of BEA’s eight junior national qualifiers in 2017. Six of those skiers, however, graduated after last season. But Sam Schoderbek and Trevor Allison, both 17, will both be returning to the national meet next month, while Aidan Whitelaw, 15, and Jack Conde, 14, get their first taste of the big stage.

“There’s an attrition rate with every step that you take; there’s attrition between youth and devo (developmental teams) and then again between devo and comp (competitive teams),” Nelson explained. “So if the youth numbers are larger, then you’ll see larger numbers in devo and larger numbers in comp. With big numbers of competitive athletes, you get that culture of healthy competition, where the kids are not only supporting each other, but also pushing each other. And that’s where you start to see communities really start pumping out competitive athletes. We have that right now in Bend.”

Simoneau said traveling to the weeklong junior national meet gives teenagers the opportunity to learn more about their sport, enjoy some independence and make friends with other young athletes from across the country.

“I came back from junior nationals, and this was before social media, and suddenly I had pals in Wenatchee, Washington, and McCall, Idaho, and Steamboat, Colorado. And they were interested in the same thing I was,” said Simoneau, who represented the U.S. as a nordic skier in the 1984 Winter Olympics. “We would write letters and talk about training. We didn’t do that at Livermore Falls High School (in Maine, where Simoneau grew up). A lot of the kids, if you were to hang around here, their conversation is about their friends from all around the world, in some cases. And that’s amplified by social media.”

But hearing about that great experience can make missing out even more devastating. MBSEF skier Mario Cacciola said he was heartbroken when he missed qualifying by one point last season, but he came back as a stronger skier and made the team this year.

“It took two years of training to get to nationals,” Cacciola said. “I am still happy (I made the team). So much pain goes into it. I don’t know how I’ll stack up.”

Another first-time qualifier, MBSEF and Bend High skier Anton Micek, said he was thrown when he learned he made the team after the final qualifier at Methow Valley, Washington, because he had just had his worst race of the season.

“I heard my name, and I was like, all right then, that’s a lot of homework I’m going to have to do,” Micek recounted. “I’m trying not to be too stressed about it, because honestly my goal for the season was just to get to junior nationals.”

Fiona Max, another returning national qualifier, said she would recommend that first-timers take advantage of all the opportunities to learn and improve during the week in Utah.

“If I had to tell newcomers one thing, it would be to be smart, but not to the point where you’re not having fun,” Max advised. “Because there’s a middle ground. There’s a way to be a smart skier and use your time wisely and get better, and there’s a way to have a ton of fun at the same time.”

—Reporter: 541-383-0305, vjacobsen@bendbulletin.com