Logan Drevlow of Hopkins melds high school Nordic skiing and mountain biking

For Logan Drevlow, hills are just hills, regardless of the place, or temperature.

Minnesota's reigning high school state champion in the boys Nordic ski pursuit race, Drevlow is also an accomplished cross-country mountain biker.

In February, he became the first high school freshman to win the individual Nordic title this century while helping Hopkins to a third-place team finish, earning him Star Tribune Boys Nordic Skier of the Year honors.

In March, after Drevlow won three races — the mass start, the freestyle and the sprint — at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Junior National Championships in Lake Placid, N.Y., he had just a week to prepare for the spring's first national mountain-biking race. He finished 14th.

"I'm usually pretty rusty," he said. "I hadn't done any intervals on the bike. I just went and raced."

A few months later, he finished third in the Junior 15-16 race at the USA Cycling Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Championships in Pennsylvania.

"I definitely shook the rust off," he said.

In September, he earned a spot on the professional Bear National team, which sponsors bikers from across the United States. Most of the members live out west, "so they have all those mountains and trails," Drevlow said. Any tricks to replicate the Rockies? "Pedaling hard," he said.

"I did 90% of my [biking] in the spring last year just on the road on western Lake Minnetonka," Drevlow said. "I want to ride on mountains, but I mean the training, it works."

When he's not riding with friends from the Hopkins Mountain Bike Club, Drevlow is usually grinding through interval rides alone.

"He will do what he needs to do on his own," Hopkins Nordic coach Brett Schulze said. "Nobody needs to tell him what he needs to do. I would never have to say, 'Go harder.' He is motivated, and he pushes himself, and that dedication is motivating for the other skiers."

Drevlow's parents are avid skiers, so as soon as he and his older sister Sydney could walk, they were enrolled in Loppet Trail Kids, a Minneapolis-based group that offers year-round outdoor endurance programs, among them skiing and mountain biking.

When Drevlow hopped on a bike, he was hooked. Fortunately, mountain bike racing and ski racing require strategically positioning yourself to gain on opponents, a skill Drevlow mastered at a young age.

"He could draft behind, for example, and [he's] dealing with hills all the time," Schulze said.

Soon after New Year's Day, Drevlow will head to Anchorage, Alaska, for a race that could qualify him for Team USA's Nordic Nations trip to Europe. Sydney, now a senior at Hopkins and who also won a Nordic state championship as a freshman, made the trip to Norway in 2023. She's committed to run collegiately for Nebraska after showing her brother the way in Nordic skiing.

"She gets to go through all the stuff for the first time, and then when I go through it, we have more of an idea what's going on," Drevlow said.

Drevlow was one spot away from making the cut at last year's qualifier in Utah. This year's trip would overlap with the high school section tournament and prevent him from securing a spot in the state tournament in February at Giants Ridge.

"Because he's so good," Schulze said, "you never know where [Nordic skiing] is going to take him."

Though the tight turnaround poses its challenges, Drevlow has escaped the pressure to pick between skiing and biking.

"Hills are just hills to him," Schulze said. "He embraces those. He embraces challenges."