The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Crested Butte assault
A local contingent of ski and snowboard athletes, both with the Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) and independently, has been dominating the regional ski and snowboard competitions in the USASA events, thus qualifying for the big show, the U.S.A. Snowboard Association (USASA) National Championships at Copper Mountain April 1-10.
All season long they’ve been honing their craft, competing and training on Crested Butte Mountain Resort under the expert tutelage of Woody Lindenmeyr, Doug Hudson and Brett Conover.
The snowboarders are in the midst of the national championships.
Izzac Nixon has been competing as an independent rider all season and entered the national championships ranked first in his region and 12th nationwide. Nixon will be competing in three disciplines, giant slalom, slalom and in the boardercross 14-15-year-old age class.
CBMST riders Harken Graceffa, Manni Ragin and Sam Brethauer all came out of the regional series with Ragin ranked first and Brethauer second in the boardercross for 10-11 year-old athletes. Mabel Howard finished regional standings second in the boardercross ages 8-9 and Anika Juneau made it to nationals as the number-one seed in the slopestyle among girls 7 and under.
The skiers will now join their teammates at Copper for the ski national championships April 4-7. Dylan Alagna finished the season ranked fourth in the Southwest in skiercross ages 10-12 to qualify for nationals and the local skiers in the nine and under age class are all coming in hot with nine CBMST skiers qualifying led by Brooks Hudson who is ranked number one in the nation.
Ella Haverkampf heads into nationals ranked first in the Southwest in skiercross girls ages 9 and under.
All told, 16 young Gunnison Valley athletes will roll into Copper on fire and look to bring home some hardware from the national scene.
