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Place has always been an important aspect of my life. Where I have been, my personal geography, has always defined who I am.
I started my journey in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1983. Growing up, my summers were spent on the family sailboat in the Apostle Islands of northern Wisconsin, where my curiosity to explore was fed by the horizon of Lake Superior and the endless forests and beaches of the islands. Thankfully, my parents never limited that inquisitiveness.
As much as place defines me, sport has defined much of my journey. I started skiing early in life with my family for recreation. Like many kids, I joined the Bill Koch Ski League in my area and learned some skills, including how to skate ski on (slow) whizzing waxless boards. So I was disadvantaged from the start, you could say. I wasn’t athletic by any means. Most sports just didn’t agree with my lack of coordination and quickness. Skiing was the sport I was bad at the least, I suppose.
At the age of 12, I started systematic training for skiing. Three years later, I tried combining shooting and skiing for the first time – and fell in love. My first season, I won two youth national titles in biathlon and went to Europe for the first time to compete. The next year, understanding that Europeans were far superior to Americans in the sport, I moved to the small mountain town of Geilo, Norway, attending the same ski gymnasium as legendary biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen. I learned to speak Norwegian, live on my own, and improved greatly. I qualified for Junior World Championships that season and competed in Siberia in a blizzard at the age of 16.
Over the next several years, I trained in Fort Kent, Maine during the summers, competed at several Junior World Championships and other events, and attended The University of Vermont. I became the top junior biathlete in the country and placed 14th at the Junior World Championships in 2004, held in the French Alps.
That spring, I took leave from college to train full-time. After a rough first season in the senior category, I was dropped from the National Team. Having set the 2006 Olympic Team as my goal at the age of 13, I was determined to qualify. I raised money and equipment from sponsors, created my own training plan, and focused completely on biathlon, splitting my time between Maine and Heber City, Utah. Despite having the odds against me, I qualified as the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic Biathlon Team in eight years with the help of my parents and support staff from the Maine Winter Sports Center.
Since the Olympic Games, I’ve competed on the World Cup, enlisted in the Army National Guard, graduated with high honors from The University of Vermont, and become interested in renewable energy technologies and business management. I now live in Salt Lake City, Utah and am a member of the Utah Army National Guard. I'll be attending the University of Utah this fall for a certificate in Geographic Information Science (GIS) after which I hope to segue into a graduate program using those skills to better site renewable energy projects in the Great Basin. |
