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.

When we first met Shelly she was returning home to Reno after taking 7th place in the women’s moguls competition at the 2008 World Cup season opener in Tignes, France. Since then we have traded emails back and forth with a plan to see her ski in person at the Deer Valley event.

After France, her next event was the Nature Valley Freestyle Cup on January 20 in Lake Placid, New York. I’m signed up for the US Ski Team email newsletter (You can sign up in the middle of the page at (www.usskiteam.com), and I saw that she took 5th place, so I sent her a congratulations email. She responded, “I was definitely excited about 5th- skiing really well- just went way too big on the bottom jump and almost over-rotated the backflip.” That statement turned out to be prophetic for her next event.

At the 2008 FIS Freestyle World Cup in Mont Gabriel, Quebec on January 26, she qualified in 4th place, but had a bad crash in the finals. In her email a few days after the event she wrote, “Well last week was a little rough- did a backflip to my head in finals so ended up 15th, but I was just thankful to be ok because it was a very bad crash. But now I’m in Deer Valley and went and did a bunch of backflips today and feeling good about it.”

This morning Shelly and I had breakfast at the Morning Ray Cafe in Park City. We had a chance to get caught up on how her season is going and had great Huevos Rancheros.

At Mont Gabriel she said she landed on the top of her right shoulder and was lucky she didn’t break her collar bone. She’s been going to a chiropractor who said the crash knocked a few ribs out of place. She’s feeling a lot better now and had a chance to ski some powder at Snowbird a couple days before. I asked her if her ribs still hurt and she said a little when she’s free skiing, but during practice when she’s so focused on the course, she doesn’t notice any pain at all.

When we first met Shelly last December, she was trying to decide if she wanted to continue skiing competitively or start a business of her own. She explained she’s 28 and wanted to figure out what her next career move should be. At breakfast we talked about how she usually is very relaxed during her qualifying runs and typically places around forth heading into finals. But she said she tends to get a little tense in the finals, make subtle mistakes and doesn’t do as well as she’d like. She has a reputation of being one of the fastest skiers on the team and could place well, if she could stay as relaxed in finals as she does in qualifying. She feels she’s coming into her prime and with the 2010 Winter Olympics two years away, she has now decided to keep skiing and stay on the team.

I was thinking, “Wow! The Olympics. She’s on the US Ski Team. Good Sponsors (Tecnica boots, Marker bindings, Smith Optics, Predator Wear, HiBall Energy). Life must be pretty good.” However, she explained she doesn’t receive a lot of cash from her equipment sponsors, the team only pays for her travel to and from the events and her lodging while there, and except for a couple patrons of mogul skiing, she pretty much has pay for the majority of her expenses herself. Prize money is not so hot either (7th in France earned her $150).

So skiing is a career of love for Shelly. She’s looking forward to skiing well this season and the next and going to the Olympics. She’s also looking for more sponsors to help her get there. If anyone’s interested, she has a big spot on her helmet that needs a logo.

It’s now almost 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Shelly gave David and I VIP passes for the Deer Valley event. I’m taking my camera and hope to get some good shots of Shelly and cheering her on (and yelling, “Relax!”). In the mean time, here’s a shot I took Friday morning of the course with 16″ of new snow. You can’t even see the bumps! But I’m sure they will be just right for Shelly by the time of the event.