The week-long Nordic state meet is held at Giants Ridge Golf Course in Biwabik, Minnesota. After winning sections and the conference, the girls headed to state as a team and as individuals. The boys team’s relay also made the journey to Biwabik.

In Nordic skiing, the individual skiers are scored based on time accomplishments. On the first day of the race, the relay skiers race, then on the second day, skiers race individually in an event called pursuit. Then, after both days, their scores are combined to determine the team’s overall score.

Senior Maren Overgaard, who has been a part of the team for her whole high school career, finds joy in the team, “That’s the first time we’ve ever won state as a full team. That’s the first time SPA Nordic has been on a podium at state,” Overgaard said.

The team had a perfect score at both the conference and section meets, which means that they won the relay and in the pursuit held first, second and third place, as well as winning as a team. This is a very rare occurrence and for it to happen at both meets back to back shows the hard work they have put in.

Overgaard raced with her sister, sophomore Alyda Overgaard. They had great success at the state meet, taking first place. “It definitely felt special to get to share my last season with her. But I think the biggest thing was we didn’t have to communicate as much on race day, because we live together, we like to share a room, we’re always with each other. Everything just kind of flows on race day,” Maren Overgaard said.

Sophomore Darin Hall and junior Sam Hilton made it to state as a relay team and they and the Overgaard team got to experience the relay together. “We spent a lot of time together because we watched it was two state was two days. So the first day was the relay, second day was everyone else. And so the second day, we were all cheering everyone on,” Hall said.

The girls team finished with Maren and Alyda Overgaard finishing first in the relay, junior Eleanor Moody finishing third and junior Paloma Good in fifth. The team’s season came to an end after their state meet in Biwabik, where they were the first Nordic team to place at state.