A Little Pizza Meeting

This summer, early on Christi and Rachel had a small meeting with the team. We had some pizza from Papa Johns and our life’s were from then on changed for the next six months or really forever. We weren’t really going to do anything different in terms of training, the plan is always to train hard but smart and try to get as fast as you possibly can for the up coming season. There is something special about gearing up for the World University Games especially for this team. For one thing we began to prepare for another crazy, eventful summer and then fall semester, full of big fundraising, scholarship/grant writing and of course good school-work. I think another important piece of this is mental preparation. When you go to WUG you will probably be facing World Cup “B” teams and some of the best skiers the world has to offer at the college level. We are also facing World Cup grade courses with live Eurosport Coverage. Not to mention you are carrying “USA” on your back, you are representing this massive country.

The real theme of that meeting last summer was about choices, big choices and participating at the 2015 World University Games was definitely a big one. You will always have big choices in your life and you going to have to deal with the consequences and also you get to lose your self in the amazing rewards and at the same time you will find yourself. There was a long period in my life where all I wanted to do was be a professional athlete or be an Olympian or something to that caliber. I will never for get when my dad would say something jokingly are you ready for Sochi in 2014 for the Olympics. Then I would say: “Yeah, it’s not going to be a big deal” with loads of sarcasm. When I sat there in Christi and Rachel’s dining room I felt like my dream was realized…twice now. I really couldn’t say anything, we were all shocked, some of us shrieked with excitement, some us gave hugs, some of us jumped around and I was just frozen. Wow my life is cool.

The United States Ski Association could have taken the fastest college Americans and I’m sure they would have done well. It was a little hard to feel deserving of this big privilege. We represent so well though because we are the real student athletes, we are all fully immersed in our class work at home and in our skiing and in our fundraising and in our lives.

30 Km is a long way to ski.