Junior National Championships
In high school, I had the opportunity to do United States Ski Association (USSA) Junior National Qualifiers (JNQ) to qualify for the High Plains Junior National team. After growing up racing for the Intermountain Division, it was a hard transition to the High Plains Dvision. I could no longer race with my teammates and friends :( It was also difficult to go from a division that supported development, growth of its skiers and top results to a division that all other divisions looked down on, including people on the team!
I had to quit racing for Intermountain because of USSA rules saying I was “too far out of the team’s borders” (even though, historically, before High Plains was established, Pinedale was a team in Intermountain). Parents also strongly vocalized that, I, a 14 year old girl, was threatening the integrity of the sport and disrespecting their hard working children (what??) I am still emotional about how disrespectful those parents treated me because it was unnecessary and very personal attacks. It wasn’t just the parents either. In 2016, Tiger Shaw and the rest of USSA chose to unaffiliate itself from High Plains and used me as an example for why it should be cut. FasterSkier wrote an article saying that I would have failed at qualifying for Junior Nationals if I still raced for Intermountain (as if I had a choice to leave).
“There might be one other factor: Jackson Hole. The town stayed part of IMD, but recently a skier who lived in Pinedale, Wyoming, and skied with Jackson Hole as a J3 (U14) decided to compete in the High Plains junior national qualifiers instead, and thus was able to meet qualification criteria where she would have failed in IMD.”
Link to the full article here.
This article told the reader many things. First it told the reader that High Plains is a slow and unsuccessful division, which is simply not true. The division has had several individual Junior National Champions and many go onto race on NCAA and USCSA college teams. Yes the team is small, but that should not undercut the success of individual athletes because they can’t compete points wise against teams of 50+ athletes. The second thing this article told the reader was that if you aren’t good enough you can always just qualify for High Plains. This is untrue. High Plains has strict qualifications which is often why the team is small. Lastly, this article told the reader, me, that I am a failure. When I raced for Intermountain as a U14, I was ranked 3rd overall meaning I would have been competitive in that division. When I attended Intermountain JNQs in later years, I did challenge this, including top 3 finishes. Reading an article that tells your teenage self and the rest of the world that you aren’t good enough, damaged my self esteem. Thankfully, it motivated me rather than stopped me!
In total, I raced at four Junior National Championships for the High Plains Division in high school. They were Truckee/Tahoe, California 2015, Cable/Hayward, Wisconsin 2016, Lake Placid, New York 2017, and Solider Hollow, Utah 2018. Here is another list of accomplishments I am proud of!
Raced for the High Plains division for four years where I was ranked 2nd U16 female (2015), 1st U16 female (2016), 3rd U18 female (2017), and 1st U18 female (2018).
For more race experience, I attended Intermountain and Rocky Mountain Division races (by myself) where I produced top 5 and top 10 results with a best performances of 2nd place (2 times in 2016).
At Junior Nationals, my top performances were 31st (2015), 37th (2016), and 30th (2017). I was injured in 2018, so we don’t need to look at those results (oof).
Awarded Rookie of the Year for team awards (2015).
I wanted to race for a college team after high school and chose the University of Wyoming. Read more about my year there on the blog post, University of Wyoming!
