Well, what a year! I just read over my last year review, and I can tell you that at that point I would never imagined being where I am now. I’ve entered the big leagues guys!

I spent a pretty boring summer in PG in 2017, working and training pretty much by myself. The only thing that kept me sane was that we had dryland camps in Calgary and ski camps in Whistler and Mt. Hood. I realized over that summer just how hard it is to motivate yourself. I do way better if I’m in an environment surrounded by fellow teammates or athletes.

In September I moved to Calgary for the ski season again. This time living with two ski cross athletes, one of them my best friend. Of course we had our little squabbles, but really, I can’t imagine having better roommates than those two. And our team this year! It was amazing! We had 8 girls on the devo team, and we all got along super well. Also, the guys on the team were a good fit, even though it always seemed like us gals were outnumbering them. We had our mix of personalities, but we all shared an equal passion for skiing, adventure and competitiveness. Ok, maybe some of us where more competitive than others... me included :) 

Some of the adventures I managed to sneak in between training and school was an overnight hike in the snow (we went fishing and found fossils!), going to Cranbrook for Thanksgiving Spätzle, coming home to Prince George for a friends wedding, and hucking some cliffs after a hike near Fernie.
Training and school were going good. We ended up just skiing around Calgary; the furthest we went was Panorama. By the beginning of December I couldn’t wait to race, but I had to wait all the way till January before our first competition. I had an awesome (and cold) Christmas in PG, training with the Prince George Ski Club crew.

Sunridge was the only race that we had before the Nakiska World Cup, which was supposed to be the biggest event of the year. It would be the first World Cup for six of us on the team! The 25 second course didn’t really prepare us for the World Cup course, but at least we were amped up. All of us on the devo team felt intimidated by the Nakiska course, since it included bigger jumps than we’d hit that year, a tricky start section, and so many rollers and doubles. It was just a big jump from anything else we had done that year. We only ended up getting two training runs in the course, which, let me tell you, did not feel like enough. We barely made it down the first time, how could we do it with 3 other people? Oh well, first we would have to qualify... We were all so nervous, but with a big Canadian crew, we found ways to distract ourselves.

It was my turn for qualifications. I felt nervous, but also prepared. I prayed the prayer that I always pray in the start gate. “God, please keep me safe, and give me the focus I need. Whatever your will is, let it be. This one’s for you.” On the course, all that I could do is keep telling myself “be aero”. It wasn’t a clean run, and as I approached the finish, I remember thinking “darn”. BUT, then I looked up, and saw a “9” beside my time. Super confused I looked at the big screen. What? I got 9th! Oh my goodness!! God, how did you do this? (Later on I was told that I had executed all the tricky sections well, so the other less than perfect sections hadn`t punished my time too much)

It was such a good feeling: seeing the grins on my parents faces, seeing my teammates and friends jumping up and down, and hearing the crowd roaring. It still gives me good butterflies to think about it.
Now that I had qualified, I had to race... I hadn’t thought about this at all. I had purposely just thought about qualifying, because why worry about something that might not happen? Now I was worrying. Oh well, I decided to use the same strategy this time around; I focused on only the first heat. I had a plan, and that was all that I let myself think about. Have a good start, and tuck in behind the leader. Now I’m in the start gate, just breathing. Pray my quick prayer. And then the race is on.

My strategy worked!! I finished that heat second. Ahh! That meant I now had two more races! I was freaking out just a bit. The team physiologist had told me “remember, this is just another race”. I just kept repeating that to myself. And thank goodness that I have God on my side. He gave me peace and relaxation, and the ability to race my hardest. The next round I came 4th, which placed me into the small final. One more heat left. After a bad start, I was in third place. I kept going, arched the one turn that I had been nailing, and started catching up. I executed a pass and stayed in second till the finish. That meant... I had gotten 6th place at my first World Cup! I could not of imagined a better way for my first World Cup to play out! 6th, at a Canadian race, with friends and family cheering me on. I couldn’t stop grinning like a lunatic for days.

As you might be able to tell, Nakiska was the highlight of my season. But I had other races too. We had a 5 week long race block, starting in North America, then heading to Europe, a stop in Russia, and then back to North America. I had some great heats, some exciting passes, some stellar courses, and 2 more World Cup starts, ending up with another 8th and 12th place.

The season ended in Red Mountain, BC at Nationals. It was a cool event since it was also alpine Nationals. Our two sports don`t end up colliding a lot, so all of us really enjoyed being around our old sport. I got 3rd at Nationals and won the NorAm title. This means that I secured a World Cup spot for myself next year!
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In May I got the news that I was now on the B team. That means I am now on the National team. Crazy. Mindblowing. Exciting. Nervewracking. We`ll see what the next season has to offer!

That’s what I’ve decided to label it; “the year of concussions”. Just like 2016 was “the year of big and bigger courses”. In my mind I will never have another year that will challenge my nerves as much as 2016 because I have now done some of the biggest features on the circuit, and survived. In the same way, I am determined that I will never have another season where I stop skiing for half of it because of concussions.

After saying that I do think I had a solid season, even though it was short. I got to go to Saas-Fee again where they had an epic set up this year, including two different start sections. In ski cross we don’t get all too much time on an actual cross course, so having 12 solid days on one is amazing. Especially when the views are breathtaking!

Our next big camp was in Sunpeaks. The hill there is always super accommodating to us, so of course we had a great camp. I ended it on a low note though, getting a concussion on the second last day, after crashing in a mock race (Dec 10). (if you don’t want to read about my concussion journey, just skip down to paragraph 3 from the end. I kind of ramble…)

What I thought was a very minor concussion would not get better. It looked really good, almost no symptoms at all after the first two days. I progressed through the first 6 steps out of our 10 step concussion protocol with zero symptoms. I got cleared to ski after a week, and I was thinking this concussion barely affected my training and school. But of course I was wrong.

I could already tell going up the chairlift that things weren’t quite right. I had to do my “back to snow” with a coach supervising, so I skied at the same time that the rest of my team trained, at night at COP. Going up the chairlift the lights started bothering me. They just seemed really bright. Skiing felt a little strange, but I thought to myself that it was because I was on slalom skis. By the end of my hour ski I felt exhausted. I got home, slept for 12 hours, and woke up with a headache. Crap. Back to step 1.

The headache did not go away for 3 days, and then was still there sometimes for the next two. I did go just over 24 hours without a headache before I headed back home to PG for Christmas, a friend driving my car. Somehow, we managed to spin and go into the ditch twice. The spinning did not do wonders to my brain. When we arrived at home I was starting to feel dizzy, which was not a symptom I had experienced before. It was mild enough that I thought maybe I was imagining my unsteadiness. After all, it had been a really long day and pretty stressful.

For the next few days the dizziness became apparently worse. My headache was pretty much gone, but it got so bad that sometimes I couldn’t sit without a backrest because I was scared I would tip over. I started going to physio for vestibular ocular therapy, and it helped a bit but the progress was slow. It took me almost a month to go from step 1 to step 6 again. Finally I could ski! I skied almost every day for a week for really short increments: from 30 min to 3 hours. At that time there was an opportunity for me to go back to Calgary, which I did. In Calgary, thanks to the awesome personal at Winsport Medical Clinic, I was cleared to race by February 10. Yay! We realized that it was not only my concussion that was creating dizziness; I actually had crystals dislodged in my inner ear. Once we got those back in place my dizziness was completely gone, and no other symptoms resurfaced! It took two months, but I was back in the game.

In the long run I realize that two months to normal isn’t that long for an injury, but it sure felt like forever for me. Since a lot of the recovery process for a concussion is resting and … doing … nothing… (which is not a skill set of mine), I really had to learn patience.

​Back to competing! I launched right into racing since it was the middle of the race season. I was really nervous about how much training time I had lost, but I won my first two races back! It felt awesome to be back at it again. I went on to race at Ski Cooper, foreran the World Cup at Blue, competed in Nationals and NorAms at Blue, and completed National Juniors at Sir Sam’s.

And got another concussion there.

​That ended my season, which really frustrated me, since I had worked super hard to qualify for World Juniors in the short time that I was racing. The concussion meant I couldn’t go to Italy for the race. Luckily the recovery from this concussion was very short; I was completely recovered in 3 weeks. 

So to summarize my season was very short, but I do call it a success. I got several results that I am very proud of, including my 5th at Nationals and a 2nd at Ski Cooper. In training and racing I am getting more consistent at starts, am becoming more confidence on judging and hitting jumps, and learning the right/smart places to pass. I am super excited for next year, and not only for skiing! A couple teammates and me are renting a place together (adulting, I know), I’m attending U of C for my first year of a Bachelor of Arts, and we have an amazing crew on the National Development Team. Also, the Olympics are happening!!! Can’t wait to cheer on Canada! What more can I ask for?

Wow!! These last few weeks have been amazing! First, the summer camp in Hintertux, Austria in August, then the dryland camp in Whistler, and now almost three weeks in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. All that I can say is: I'm living the life! Even though the snow was quickly disappearing in Hintertux, the time there was worth it. I finally think I got the hang of those 30 meter radius skis, and my slalom was definitely looking fast. Check out some video from there on the video page!

After that camp, I had another two weeks of vacation, and a week of school before I headed off to Whistler. The dryland camp was certainly tiring, but man, I got a lot out of it! It was incredible to train with the Ski Cross World Cup Team (and the Devo Team). Those guys work crazy hard! The highlight of that camp was definitely learning about and analyzing my ski cross starts. I might have learned that I have a lot of work to do at the skill, but I'm excited and ready to get better!

A week and a half later I found myself on an airplane heading to beautiful Switzerland. If you ever get a chance to go to Saas-Fee, definitely take it! The mountains just go on forever, the view is breathtaking. The set up there for ski cross is beyond great too, especially for people who are just learning. Coaches could choose to set a burm one day, and a negative the next. Some days there were more rollers, other courses were filled with jumps. The improvement from the first to last day was crazy. On the last day I was just so much more comfortable on the features. And the best thing? I was training with people like Marielle Thompson, Kelsey Serwa, and Fanny Smith!!! Did I freak out? Maybe a bit... It was unbelievably awesome doing heats with World Cup Medalists. 

So did I die a bit because of the awesomeness of my last two months? Of course. But with such a great start to this season, I can only imagine what is to come!

I guess I started the school year off with a frustrating note. I dislocated my shoulder in September, which left me unable to do proper training for what seemed like forever (realistically, around 2 months). After my recovery time things were going well for me. I got to ski in November (yay!), training was going well, and my shoulder seemed to have recovered most of its strength. 

The first real challenge came when it was time for my first FIS race, in December. I felt somewhat unprepared, because I hadn't had that much training on snow, and I knew the hill was going to be extremely icy. Sure enough the slope looked like a skating rink. That first race series, putting it quite bluntly, sucked. I didn't feel confident, I was tired and sick, and my nerves were not helping the matter. After four races I only managed to drop my points to 250 in GS, and to 185 in slalom. I was quite disappointed in myself.

The next race I had was in February, so I had lots of time to gain confidence and to work on technique (especially getting used the new and "improved" GS skis). The training wasn't great, but we managed. No ski hill in BC had a lot of snow, so we felt lucky to even be able to ski. The only setback that really frustrated me was that I hurt my shoulder again in January, but fortunately it was only a subluxation. 

The camp/race in Kimberley was a great experience. It was a downhill camp, a discipline that I had never had a chance to do so before. I loved it!! Sadly, because of the lack of snow on the hill, the speed races were canceled, as well as 3 days of downhill training. We did have a night slalom race, where I placed quite well (17th out of 54 girls), which proved that my training was paying off.

When we arrived home the Canada Winter Games was already underway. I got the privilege of forerunning for the ski racing. I also got to watch fellow Sports School athletes win numerous medals, lots of golds included. I am so proud of them! 

I had a few more races at the end of the year, and I have to say that they were definitely an improvement over the start of the year. I dropped my slalom points down to 120 and my GS points to 200. There is most definitely room to improve, but I am still proud of my results. 

I also got the opportunity to participate in the Ski Cross Nationals. I placed 4th in both the Junior Nationals and the Senior Nationals, and managed to achieve a 3rd at a FIS race that was tied into the event. I even beat some girls that had gone to Junior Worlds! Because of my performance at this camp I, and a few others, were invited to a National Team and National Development Team Camp. I don't think I had ever been so excited in my life. I learned a ton at the camp (you can watch some of the video of it on my video page), and now I know exactly what I have to work on so I can get better at ski cross. Again, the only downfall about this camp was hurting my shoulder. By then I had dislocated my shoulder twice, and subluxated it at least six times. Therefore it was extremely weak when I subluxated it once again, and I to be way more careful than I like to be. 

This spring has been all about trying to get my shoulder back to normal, which is proving on being a difficult task. But it is slowly (too slowly!) getting better. Of course, I am also training and playing soccer, as well as trying to get my school work done. Exams are tomorrow, wish me luck! 

Wow! What a year! I can't believe it's already coming to an end. It seems like it passed so fast. I feel like I actually did accomplish a lot this year, even if it wasn't my best in competition. I had some awesome runs at Mike and Manny Camp, and I gained a lot of knowledge at the Talent ID Camp. I entered and won(!) my first Western ski cross race. I surprised myself by deadlifting 275 pounds, and improved my jumping ability by a lot. I  got 5th in training at CanAm Westerns. I even got my first stitches!

I hadn't realized what a great year I had until I looked now. During my season, I was really frustrated with my competitions and sometimes my training. I wanted to improve right away; to always have the perfect conditions and the best hill. It didn't happen like that, but I definitely improved my patience and saw how much I loved ski racing, even when I was disappointed with myself.

I guess that the lesson I learned is that I need to be patience and appreciate my strengths. I can't allow myself to focus on the negative things; I need to set my mind on my improvements.