Skier of the Week RMISA Regionals: February 26 & 27

Sierra crushing the 15km Classic

As we prepare for Nationals we honor a skier who has been the heart of this team, both on the trails and off, for the past five years.

We first met young Sierra Jech as a transfer from University of New Hampshire. She wasn't stoked to be at UW, having transferred for financial reasons, but she was making the best of it and joined the team.

It quickly became clear to us just how special this young lady was. She was quickly not only one of the fittest and most dedicated athletes on the team but she almost immediately approached us with a new idea for fundraising. An idea that was both financially appealing AND environmental and social justice oriented - Trash 2 Treasures. T2T jumpstarted our campus and community involvement in environmental justice that has lead us to be one of the leading student groups for environmental justice on campus. This has enabled us to help plan and organize recycling at Football Games and we are part of the University Sustainability Committee.

It is doubtful any of this would have happened without Sierra's vision and leadership over the past few years.

A literal book could be written about Sierra's involvement on campus and her leadership of the team but here we will focus on her skiing.

Sierra loves to ski, she loves the outdoors and she loves the movement of her body. She has spent the past 5 years on this team working and training and skiing fast. She was one of the first women to truly believe she could compete on a NCAA Division I level and she proved it multiple times in her career, including this past weekend where she placed 25th in the 15km classic and 31st in the 5km skate. She would have been on the traveling team for four of these powerhouse NCAA Division I teams and would have been in the scorers for 2 of them.

After a season in which she started out injured and slowly pulled back her skiing Sierra nearly reache the qualifying mark for the NCAA Championships, being in the second alternate seat at the end of the season.

This week Sierra will take her leadership role to a new place as she attends USCSA Nationals as she was chosen the Female Nordic Student Representative last summer. She will represent the athlete voice at Nationals as well as trying her hand at assistant coaching with our crew.

We will miss her next year as she pursues her sexy mind at graduate school but she will never be out of our hearts.

For her a weekend preceeded by years of inspiration, leadership and just plain bad-assery we honor Sierra Jech as Skier of the Week!

You not only ROCK OUR WORLD but you have permanently ROCKED OUR WORLD!