The first time Maren Overgaard recalls skiing with her sister Alyda, things didn’t go so well.

“I was in eighth grade,” the senior at St. Paul Academy and Summit School said. “She was in sixth grade, so she hadn’t joined the team yet. But we were on the Birkie trail in Cable, Wisconsin, and Alyda broke my pole!

“I can still remember her just trying to keep up with me on those hills.”

It went much more smoothly Wednesday when Maren and Alyda, now a sophomore, teamed up to win the girls team sprint title at the state Nordic ski meet at Giants Ridge in Biwabik.

The duo finished in a time of 14 minutes, 20.3 seconds, outpacing the second-place team of Nora Deisz and Keira Dahlquist of Minneapolis Southwest that finished in 14:29.19.

“There were no broken poles this time,” Alyda said with a laugh. “I made sure of that. And I stayed on my feet this time, too. There were no falls.”

Maren – who has competed at the state meet since she was in seventh grade – was a defending champion in the sprint, having captured the state title with partner Inga Wing a year ago.

But she said this time was even more special, both because it marked her final high school race, and she got to complete it with her sister.

“I’ve been to state every single year, but this one definitely had a different tone to it,” Maren said. “I told myself in the lead-up this week to make sure to slow down and soak it all in.

“I knew this would be my last race, and to be able to share that with my sister was really cool.”

The siblings actually had a conversation after head coach Maxemilian Lundgren paired Alyda with her sister.

“She sat me down a couple months ago and told me she wanted to win the whole thing,” Maren said. “We were both really excited that we were going to get the chance to share this experience together.”

“I actually said it as a joke,” added Alyda, who was watching from the top of the hill when her sister and Wing won last season. “I mean I did want to win. But classic is not my favorite technique, and I wasn’t feeling very confident in my abilities. But we worked through that.”

Indeed they did … well enough to end up as state champions.

“Classic isn’t Alyda’s favorite technique, but once she was assigned to the relay, she threw herself into it every week and wound up skiing faster than I could have possibly imagined,” Lundgren said. “And Maren is just an amazing technician. I wasn’t surprised at all she was as dialed in as she was today.”

The team of Eden Prairie seniors Ani Dirks and Sydney Bond finished fourth overall in the girls race in a time of 14:44.37. St. Paul Highland Park senior Madeleine Klevay and junior Alice Rapacz finished in sixth place in a time of 15:07.21

St. Paul Central was one spot away from making the final, ending up ninth overall with a heat time of 15:42.18. Stillwater finished 10th (15:44.45), Forest Lake finished 19th (16:30.02), Roseville finished 21st (16:39.34) and Eagan finished 22nd (17:07.85).

In the boys sprint team final, the day belonged to a Stillwater duo who each felt they had something to prove.

Senior Talbot Ward competed at state in this event two years ago when he and partner Charlie Sanderson finished ninth overall, one spot away from qualifying for finals. Junior Wyatt Wolfe, meanwhile, was in the event last season. But he and partner Mo Schollett finished 13th, also missing the finals.

In fact, no Stillwater boys team had previously advanced to the sprint finals. But that changed Wednesday when Ward and Wolfe won the boys race in a time of 12:16.69.

“There’s been a smile on my face since we finished,” Ward said. “I can’t describe how good this feels.”

“It was so much fun,” Wolfe added. “I don’t even know what to say right now. Last year was a little disappointing. It didn’t go the way we were hoping it would.

“But to come back and win it all today was a huge redemption.”

That exhilaration was shared by Ponies head coach Torry Kraftson.

“I couldn’t be more proud of these guys,” he said afterward. “Since they started the sprint relay here, we’ve never had a boys team make a final. So just seeing them get there was quite thrilling in itself. But then to watch the way they skied in the finals was incredible.

“I don’t have enough words to describe it.”

The St. Paul Academy and Summit School duo of Sam Hilton and Darien Hull placed sixth in a time of 12:55.34.

Not making the final in the boys race was Como Park, which finished 11th with a heat time of 13:21.70. Mounds Park Academy was 16th (13:29.05), Mounds View was 20th (13:37.67) and Rosemount/Apple Valley/Eastview was 24th (14:55.21).

State Nordic competition continues Thursday with the girls and boys individual pursuit.

Minnesota United is finalizing the signing of right back Kyle Duncan, a source told the Pioneer Press on Wednesday.

The Loons have had a need at the position going into 2026 season and are looking to help fill it with the 28-year-old American who played for New York Red Bulls from 2018-25.

Duncan is expected to join MNUFC for the tail end of their preseason work at the Coachella Valley Invitational in Indio, Calif., through this weekend. Duncan has been going through medical tests and the announcement of his addition to MNUFC is believed to be imminent.

Duncan had three assists in 1,531 minutes across 20 matches in 2025 before Red Bulls declined his contract option in November. He has played 11,202 minutes over 147 MLS matches and had a stint with Oostende in Belgium’s top flight in 2021-22.

The Loons have been using center backs to fill the gap at right back in friendly matches over the last week, including Jefferson Diaz in the 3-0 win over Kansas City on Saturday and Carlos Harvey in the 0-0 draw with D.C. United on Wednesday.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Melania Trump on Wednesday celebrated an early Valentine’s Day with children and young adults being treated for rare and serious diseases, joining them in holiday-themed craft-making and chatting about their lives, health and other interests.

After they finished making flower bouquets and lanterns out of construction paper and other materials, they stepped over to a festively decorated dessert bar laid out with mini cupcakes and jars of mini chocolates and other candies.

The first lady then made a somewhat sour confession days before a holiday famous for heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolates.

“I don’t eat much sweets,” she said. “Sugar is not that healthy for us.”

It was her first visit of the second Trump administration to The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health, and her fourth as first lady. She visited three times in the first term.

One of the young men told the first lady he did not know how to address her and wondered whether “your highness” was an option.

Her answer?

“Melania,” she said with a smile.

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The Children’s Inn is a nonprofit that provides support to children and young adults receiving treatment through clinical trials for rare and serious diseases.

Under President Donald Trump, the NIH has cut billions of dollars in research projects, bypassing the usual scientific funding process. The cuts included clinical trials testing treatments for cancer, brain diseases and other health problems that a recent report said impacted over 74,000 people enrolled in the experiments.

Congress recently approved a $47 billion budget for NIH this year, giving it a small raise and rejecting the Trump administration’s call for a nearly 40% cut to the agency’s funding.

AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of several New Yorkers who had their EBT accounts drained through skimming—a type of electronic fraud in which card data is stolen.

A storefront on East Gun Hill Road in the Bronx, Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

One morning in January, Crystal Carrero went to her usual grocery store in Crown Heights. But when she went to pay, the cashier told her there was no money on her Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card.

“It was impossible,” she remembered saying, because she hadn’t used any of the funds, and she had recently checked the balance: $923, her monthly benefits from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps low-income households afford groceries.

Carrero, 38, was still stunned when she got back to her apartment and checked her account. In six different transactions early in the morning, her SNAP benefits were drained. The money she used to feed her two kids and support her granddaughter was gone.

Her EBT card had been “skimmed”—a type of electronic fraud in which card data is stolen. Thousands of New Yorkers have been victims of it in recent years, with no recourse to recover what was lost. The federal government no longer refunds stolen benefits after the legislation that authorized those reimbursements ended in 2024.

Despite an uptick in EBT card skimming across the country in recent years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees SNAP regulations, only reimburses physical card thefts, not skimming fraud. In 2023, a group of New Yorkers who had their SNAP benefits stolen through electronic skimming filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA.

A federal judge dismissed the case in August, but the two organizations representing New Yorkers affected by the EBT card data theft, Legal Aid Society and Freshfields—a global law firm—filed an appeal on Monday.

At the heart of the case is whether rules that were created when paper SNAP coupons were still being issued apply to new forms of electronic benefit theft, and how the protections stipulated by Congress when it made the transition from paper to cards apply in this new era. Under the paper regime, USDA would only replace benefits that were stolen in the mail, before they were received.

“But if you had the coupons in your pocket and you were on your way to the store and they got stolen, those would not be replaced,” explained Ed Josephson, a supervising attorney at Legal Aid. “The theory was that at least you know if they’re in your pocket, you have some control over your coupons, and you can take care with them, but you obviously have no control when they’re in the mail.”

Today, skimming lets scammers access a compromised account remotely, even as soon as the account receives funds. The lawsuit argues that this modern scam is similar to mail theft, because the benefits are stored in a government account and are stolen before the recipient can exercise control over them.

The plaintiffs also say that the USDA’s EBT regulation doesn’t follow the law’s “similar rights” requirement from the paper era. When Congress changed SNAP from paper coupons to EBT cards decades ago, it said recipients should maintain the same rights and that the rules for getting money back should be “similar” to the rules for paper coupons.

“So what we’re arguing is that what Congress intended was that no group of SNAP recipients would lose out as a result of the transition from paper to EBT,” Josephson said. “And what USDA has done is they’ve excluded this huge category of people, which is the people who lose benefits before they have them, before they receive them.”

The USDA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Josephson also said that the agency’s current refund policy is too narrow and ignores skimming altogether. One of the goals of the lawsuit, he explained, is for USDA to update or put out a new rule that properly accounts for skimming-type losses.

Congress previously passed a bill that allowed for some reimbursement for skimming losses occurring between Oct. 1, 2022, and December 2024. But it’s since expired.

Josephson said it will take several more months for their case to play out. In the meantime, many people continue to fall victim to skimming, and must rely on food pantries to make ends meet to make up the difference, including Carrero.

In the absence of federal changes, some states have stepped in to implement the use of modern chip cards, which are more secure. Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the long-awaited upgrade of New York’s EBT cards to a chip-based technology, something advocates have long pressed for.

The state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), which administers SNAP in New York, put out a request for proposals last year for a new EBT card vendor to carry out the switch. The agency did not provide a timeline or estimated costs for the change, but said the governor wants to implement it as quickly as possible, with more information expected soon.

“As federally funded nutrition programs like SNAP are under attack in Washington, Governor Hochul has been laser-focused on protecting the dollars that New Yorkers depend on and ensuring they can access resources necessary to uplift them and their families,” an OTDA spokesperson said in a statement.

OTDA urges EBT users to be aware of skimming fraud when using their cards, change PINs often, check store terminals for loose keypads or card readers, freeze the card when it’s not in use and block out-of-state transactions through the app (available in Apple App Store and Google Play Store) or the ebtEDGE website.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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