USASA Nationals 2026 wrap — every division gold, age by age

The 2026 USASA National Championships wrapped at Copper Mountain on April 8 after twelve days of competition. The snowboard side ran March 28 through April 2; freeski took over April 4 through April 8.

We pulled the gold medalists for the divisions that matter most for development tracking: Open Class (the elite tier), Junior 17-18 (the U.S. team feeder), Youth 15-16, Breaker 13-14, Menehune 11-12, and Grommet 9-10. The Senior, Master, and Legend divisions ran too — coverage is on the event pages but isn't the focus here.

Here are the 2026 national champions, age by age.

Snowboard halfpipe

Headline finding: Cruz Rodriguez won BOTH the Open Class Men and Breaker (13-14) Boys halfpipe titles. Same athlete in our database — verified by ID. That's a 13-14-year-old taking the open national championship in halfpipe. The age-class system meant he was eligible to compete in both, and he won both.

Backed-up breakthrough: Priscila Cid won the Snowboard Youth (15-16) Girls halfpipe title — backing up her first-ever Rev Tour podium at Aspen two weeks earlier. Two big halfpipe results in a single month, after years of regional grinding. The Cid story is one of the most encouraging of the season.

Snowboard slopestyle

Snowboard rail jam

Snowboard boardercross

Freeski halfpipe

Hunter Maytin taking the Open Class halfpipe title is consistent with his Rev Tour qualifier season — he was already a 2-medal-threshold rider for U.S. Freeski Rookie Team consideration, and a national title cements that profile.

Freeski slopestyle

Freeski rail jam

(No Freeski Junior 17-18 Women, Youth 15-16 Girls, or Grommet Boys rail jam event ran.)

Freeski ski cross

The triple-gold story

The most striking individual result of the entire 2026 Nationals: Finley Flanagan, age 9-10, won the Freeski Grommet Girls halfpipe AND slopestyle AND rail jam national titles. Three different freestyle disciplines, three first-place finishes at the same Nationals.

Triple-gold finishes at any USASA Nationals are rare — most kids specialize by 11 or 12. A Grommet doing all three says something about either the kid's all-around progression or the depth at that age class. Or both.

Multi-discipline gold medalists

A look at every athlete who took more than one national title at the 2026 Nationals:

• Kayley Warren (SB Grommet Girl) — halfpipe + giant slalom + slalom (3)
• Finley Flanagan (FK Grommet Girl) — halfpipe + slopestyle + rail jam (3)
• Priscila Cid (SB Youth Girl) — halfpipe + slopestyle
• Cruz Rodriguez (SB) — Open Class Men halfpipe + Breaker Boys halfpipe (cross-class)
• Athena Windell (FK Menehune Girl) — halfpipe + rail jam
• Kiwi Y. Huang (FK Menehune Boy) — halfpipe + slopestyle
• Grayson Miller (FK Grommet Boy) — halfpipe + slopestyle
• Ben Harrington (FK Junior Men) — slopestyle + rail jam
• Piper Johnson (FK Open Women) — slopestyle + rail jam
• Emily Ahlcrona (FK Junior Women) — halfpipe + ski cross
• Estelle Clark (SB Junior Women) — halfpipe + rail jam
• Sadie Rifkin (SB Breaker Girl) — slopestyle + rail jam
• Paizley White (SB Menehune Girl) — slopestyle + rail jam
• Eveanna Kramer (SB Grommet Girl) — rail jam + boardercross

That's 14 athletes with multiple national titles from one event. Two of them — Kayley Warren and Finley Flanagan — went even further with 3-gold showings. Kayley's is particularly notable: she took the Grommet Girls halfpipe title AND both racing titles (giant slalom AND slalom), spanning the full range of USASA competition formats. She's the only 2026 champion to sweep both freestyle and race disciplines at the same Nationals.

Podium leaderboard

Beyond gold medals, the athletes with the most total podium finishes across the 2026 Nationals youth divisions:

• Paisley Hauke (SB Ruggie Girl, 7-8) — 5 podiums (1G, 2S, 2B) across halfpipe, slopestyle, GS, slalom, and boardercross
• Kayley Warren (SB Grommet Girl) — 4 podiums (3G, 0S, 1B)
• Eveanna Kramer (SB Grommet Girl) — 4 podiums (2G, 1S, 1B)
• Madden Matuga (SB Grommet Boy) — 4 podiums (2G, 0S, 2B)
• Akemi Koo (SB Grommet Boy) — 4 podiums (0G, 3S, 1B)

Paisley Hauke's five-event podium across every discipline she entered — at age 7-8 — is the broadest multi-podium showing at the entire 2026 Nationals. A remarkable early-career benchmark from the Ruggie Girls field.

What this means for the development pipeline

A few patterns to note:

1. Open Class winners are mostly NOT names you'd see on Rev Tour podiums. That's not unusual — Rev Tour and USASA Nationals serve overlapping but different cohorts. Many top Rev Tour riders skip USASA Nationals because it conflicts with World Cup, Grand Prix, or Continental Cup obligations. So Nationals Open Class champions are often the strongest USASA-focused athletes, who may or may not transition to the qualifier-tier circuits.

1. The Junior 17-18 and Youth 15-16 divisions are the most important for tracking. Junior is the age class where the next U.S. Rookie Team picks come from. Youth is one rung below — the names winning here today are the riders who'll be at Junior level in two seasons. Notable names: Will Howard (HP) and Estelle Clark (HP + RJ double) on the snowboard Junior side; Dax Hilleke (HP), Ben Harrington (SS + RJ double), and Skyler Vaivoda-Kerr (SS) on the freeski Junior side. Then there's Priscila Cid in Snowboard Youth Halfpipe — already on Rev Tour, already a Rev Tour podium finisher, and now a national champion in her age class.

1. The young divisions (Grommet, Menehune, Breaker) are statistically noisy but emotionally meaningful. A 9-year-old winning a national title doesn't predict an Olympic future, but the kids who keep showing up — and keep winning — have something. Multi-discipline winners at young ages are especially worth tracking over the next 5-10 years.

Where to find the full results

Every division's full results — including silver, bronze, and full placement — is on the individual event pages. Each athlete's profile page links to all of their Nationals results plus their full season history.

If you spot a missing result, name spelling, or any data correction, the email is open.

Congratulations to every national champion — and every athlete who made it to Copper.

Updated August 5, 2026: Added the Snowboard Junior 17-18 Women, Youth 15-16 Girls, and Grommet 9-10 Girls slopestyle podiums, plus corrected multi-discipline standouts. These results were originally missing because USASA ran several small divisions in a single pooled bracket that our crawler didn't recognize. Thanks to Vicki Warren, whose email prompted the fix.