SOAR Blog

This weekend was the 2008 Sprint U.S. Freestyle Championships at Deer Valley and Shelly was back in town. David and I were lucky to have met Shelly several months ago on a flight back from a client meeting. A couple months later, Shelly came to Utah for the Visa Freestyle International and I had chance to go to breakfast with her the Friday before competition.

The next day my wife, Debbie and I went to Deer Valley to watch Shelly compete, but an ill-timed exit from the chairlift made it so we missed watching Shelly win! (Deb and I were riding the chair down from the race course to get warm, didn’t have skis on and had to sprint out of the way of the chair and Deb didn’t quite make it. The chair hit her, knocking her to the ground. She felt a little loopy, so we went home.) David was there for Shelly’s win and has been meaning to blog about it for awhile.

This time Shelly was in Utah to compete for the national title in individual and dual moguls. She’s been the Duals National Champion for the last three years straight. Deer Valley’s Champion run, where the course was set, is one of Shelly’s favorites. It’s one of the steepest on the circuit, which makes it a very technical course with lots of speed.

At Saturday’s individual mogul competition Shelly did great. It was a U.S. Ski Team sweep with teammate, Emiko Torito winning the gold, Shelly captured Silver and Hannah Kearney took bronze.

Sunday I had a chance to watch Shelly in the dual moguls competition. I missed the morning’s qualifications, but when I arrived at the mountain I found out Shelly was the number one seed out of 16 competitors and was slated to ski first in the next round. Shelly would ski against the 16th seeded racer, Kristi Waring of Centennial, Colorado, and as the top seed, would get to choose which side of the course to ski, either the blue course on the left or the red course on the right. Both courses had rock hard bumps with about 2 to 3 inches of snow in the troughs (the course received a light dusting the night before and on and off during the day). Shelly chose the blue course.

I climbed up the left side of the course about 50 feet above the last jump with my camera. I was there during the final practice session before Shelly’s run. During practice, Shelly came slowly down the course memorizing each mogul. She was focused on winning this event.

At around 2:00 it was time for Shelly’s run. She looked very smooth and fast at the top, landed her first jump easily and was about 30 to 4o feet ahead of Waring. I got some good shots of Shelly as she went by. I stopped taking pictures just as she was about to go off the last jump.

Shelly did a beautiful iron cross backflip, got her skis back under her, but landed a little bit short. Less than a second later, her tips caught some loose snow, crossed just a little and she went down. The speed Shelly was carrying into the bottom section allowed her to pop right back up, like nothing happened, and cross the finish line - still about 30 to 40 feet ahead of Waring. It was up to the judges whether or not Shelly went on to the next round.

The judges assign points on how well the athletes do allocated between 50 percent turns and 25 percent jumps. They really wanted to give the win to Shelly. She is a crowd favorite, had improved a lot this year and this would be her fourth straight Duals National Championship, if she won.

It took a little longer than normal for the judges to tally up their points, but since Shelly landed a little short and fell in the last few moguls, she took a big hit in points and lost the round. Shelly couldn’t move on to the next round to defend her title.

I ran down the hill to see Shelly. When I got to the bottom, she was talking with her mom behind the announcers’ stage. She was upset about losing the run on such a simple mistake, but wasn’t overly angry or depressed. She was very gracious when I went up to speak with her.

Shelly’s a great athlete with a great heart and she loves skiing - all forms of skiing - not just moguls. Now that the mogul season is over, she wants to do some freeskiing with family and friends, and after that she’s off to compete in the 2008 Subaru Freeskiing World Championships in Alyeska, Alaska (It’s is not a mogul event. Shelly is a great all mountain skier as well).

The next day, Shelly and I had a chance to have lunch together. We talked about her skiing career, sponsorship issues, the Olympics (That’s her next big goal), her post U.S. Ski team career (possibly start a freeskiing clinic or become a guide for a couple years), and finally, her goal to be an elementary school teacher (besides being a competitor, she is also a student. All she has left to earn her teaching credential is her student teaching, which she will finish partially this year and next).

Shelly works hard. Ski industry sponsorship outside the team is difficult to come by (Industry sponsors pay into the U.S. Ski Team’s sponsorship pool and they often don’t have much left for the athletes individually. The U.S. Ski Team covers team members’ airfare and lodging). In the non-winter months and between races, team members need to cover their own living expenses, which can be tough if you’re trying to train, go to school and work at the same time.

If you are looking to or know of someone who wants to sponsor an Olympic athlete, a great woman who will have some great stories to tell her future elementary students, then Shelly’s the perfect person.

We look forward to helping Shelly in anyway we can and cheering her on.

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