Ski and Snowboard Club Vail’s Maizy Douglas and Solveig Moritz are thrilled for US Alpine Championships on their home track

Maizy Douglas and Solveig Moritz already capitalized on having the U.S. Alpine Championships at home, even though the four-day event’s opening race was postponed Saturday morning.

After the super-G was called, Douglas and Moritz had less than two hours to change out of their boots, conduct an interview and put on their Vail Mountain School soccer jerseys for a noon matchup against Moffat County. The multi-sport athletes are optimistic about the Gore Rangers’ prospects on the pitch this year, even though they won’t pull together the whole roster, a significant portion of which consists of Ski and Snowboard Club Vail skiers, until mid-April.

“We never get our full team until the end of the season,” Douglas said.

After the game, Moritz and Douglas will dive back into Alpine mode. Both are slated to compete against the country’s best in all three events on Golden Peak, the first time the U.S. Alpine Championships have come to Vail.

“It’s going to be so much fun at home,” Moritz said.

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“We’ve trained here since we were 5 or 6,” added Douglas. “Just knowing that what we train on every day is going to be a national race is so exciting.”

The leaders of Ski and Snowboard Club Vail’s FIS women’s team enter the culminating event with serious momentum. Douglas took advantage of her soft-snow skiing skills earlier this month, accruing four top-10 finishes at U18 nationals in Aspen, including a silver in the giant slalom and a runner-up showing in the overall standings.

“I’ve never gotten that high at U18 nationals,” the 17-year-old said. “The work paid off, which is super nice to see.”

Meanwhile, Moritz, the younger sister of U.S. Ski Team twins Liv and Kjersti, took a bronze in the downhill and posted promising results at the NorAm Finals at Burke Mountain this March.

“I’ve progressed so much and learned so much through these NorAm circuits,” Moritz said. “So, having my best result there was such a blast, especially since I got to race with my sisters. It’s been awesome this year with Kjersti’s comeback season and Liv having an outstanding season. It’s been super fun to learn from them and race with them.”

Moritz and Douglas came into the 2024-25 campaign hoping to hone elements of their tech disciplines via racing more speed events. Douglas explained the counterintuitive concept this way:

“In the turn, you have a lot more time, and when I went into GS, I realized I wasn’t moving as much as I needed to.”

“For me, it was more about slowing down on fundamentals and mastering everything in speed,” Moritz added. “And then just making it a little quicker in GS and slalom.”

Douglas said chasing races on the stepping stone circuit to the World Cup has made for a “hectic” year. All told, the VSSA senior, who has committed to skiing at Colby College next spring but might take a gap year instead, has pushed out of the gate 54 times between FIS, NorAm and National Junior Races this year. That’s not counting downhill training sessions.

“We went up to the East Coast for a while and then Canada for two months,” she said. “We wanted to challenge ourselves; if you’re going to compete against them at some point, you might as well start now just to see where you fall.”

Despite never having raced downhill before this winter, the pair finished tied for 11th in the NorAm discipline standings. But they still consider slalom and GS to be their strong suits. Douglas won the GS at a Beaver Creek FIS race on Feb. 18 while Moritz picked up three podiums — including a super-G win on Jan. 20 and a bronze the following day (which was her best FIS points performance of the year) — at Vail Mountain.

“They have had strong seasons in both the tech disciplines and speed,” coach Pat Duran said. “They’ve been working hard, and we should expect some great results from them this week.”

The Vail event won’t be the first U.S. Alpine Nationals for either athlete, but the expectations this time around are a little different from when they were in Sun Valley, Idaho, a year ago. There, Moritz was 19th, 26th and 29th in the super-G, GS and slalom, while Douglas posted two top-25 finishes.

“Even though it was really hard conditions, it was such a blast,” Moritz said. “I think just being in the environment with all these girls who are racing at the highest level is super important. Here, racing against my sisters and Paula (Moltzan) — you can imitate what they’re doing and learn from them.”

Both athletes feel they have top-10 chances in super-G and GS on Sunday and Monday.

 “Last year, I was more just in awe that I was pushing out of the same start gate as those people,” Douglas said. “This year it’s more of a challenge. … I want to get closer to them than I was before.”