filmmaker / adaptive alpine ski racer
a new dream
A lifelong ski racer, I was devastated when I lost range of motion in my major weight bearing joints due to complications from my autoimmune disease, Systemic Juvenile Rheumatoid/Idiopathic Arthrtis (SJIA), in 2022.
But in 2024, I painfully restarted the sport from scratch, regaining the sport in a new way, as a seated athlete in a mono sit-ski.
Now I have returned to racing, training with the National Ability Center's High Performance team, my home team in Palisades Tahoe, and the Snow Summit FIS team while in SoCal for college. The 2025 season is my comeback to the competitive circuit, and I will be competing in FIS Para races.
While I once dreamed of the Olympics, I now dream of the Paralympics. My goal is to make the US Ski Team for the 2030 winter games in the French Alps.
from lost to found - my story
My family has always been a skiing family, so as a toddler growing up in Truckee, California, they put me on skis as soon as possible. I started on the Tahoe Donner team when I was 3 years old and immediately fell in love. When I got older we moved away from Truckee, but we never stopped skiing. I joined the Palisades teams, starting with the Mighty Mites (where I later coached!) and then the Development and Far West race teams, which I skied on through high school.
When I was 12, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (SJIA) also known as Still’s Disease. This means my innate immune system attacks my joints and organs, causing inflammation and damage.
When I was first diagnosed, my right ankle was my only affected lower body joint. Ski racing went from my favorite sport, to the only sport I could participate in, as I learned to adapt my skiing to accommodate my non-articulating ankle. On land I needed a crutch to walk, but on the mountain I could ditch my crutch and fly away on skis. Being a ski racer truly became cemented into my identity as it was the only place I felt uninhibited by my diagnosis, able to excel beyond even my able-bodied peers.
Three years ago, amidst my senior year of high school, I experienced a severe SJIA flare causing my disability to progress significantly. While after a few months my systemic involvement was able to be controlled, my joint involvement was not. The rest of my major lower body joints became damaged by the inflammation progressing to joint contractures and ankylosis. My 2022 season ended early when I no longer had the joint range of motion to continue walking and — even more heartbreaking to me — to continue skiing. I had to learn to adapt my life to living in a wheelchair, and lost the sport that was my only escape from my SJIA.
When I was finally somewhat well enough, my family and friends encouraged me to try out lessons at my local adaptive center. At first, I was adamantly against the idea of sit-skiing, since it looked so different. Determined to stand-up ski, I did a couple lessons attempting to 4-track (stand up skiing with outriggers) in winter 2023. However, due to my extremely limited weight bearing range of motion, it felt nothing like the sport I knew and loved. I realized I would never be able to replicate the angles and speed I loved about skiing through 4-tracking, but I was still suspicious of sit-skiing. I was afraid it would never measure up to "real" skiing. But after watching some videos of Paralympic monoskiers, I realized I could't be further from the truth, and agreed to give sit-skiing a try.
Learning to monoski was tough. After a 2 difficult days on a monoski in 2023, I came into the 2024 season ready to take skiing back for good.
Being stuck on the bunny hill, watching the rest of the mountain go on without me made my heart ache. I wished I could be out there too. I wanted so badly to take a break from learning this new way of skiing and go out for just a couple of runs as a stand up skier, the way I used to do, but I couldn’t. So I kept trying. Over and over again. And eventually, it started to click. I think I will always remember the moment when it hit me, that for the first time in 2 years at that point, I actually felt like I was skiing again.
I was able to get many days on snow (not quite the 80+ days I had in 2021, when I skied/trained after school every day, but much better than the underwhelming 4 days I had the year prior) and by the end of the season I was able to ski the whole mountain. At the end of May, I got invited to join my old team for a spring slalom camp, my first time back in gates in over 2 years, and my first time ever in gates as a monoskier. It was ROUGH. But it also reminded me how much I loved and missed racing. It reignited my passion for the sport and I knew I had to get back in gates again.
I started the 2025 season at a development camp for adaptive ski racers, the first time I had ever been surrounded by other young disabled athletes with dreams like mine. Luckily my college has a 6-week long winter break, so I was able to jump in head first training full time with my old ski team back home. I was then invited to join the National Ability Center's High Performance Team in Park City, UT, where I trained for the last 2 weeks of my break. I also was able to compete in my first race since being a sit skier (and my first FIS NORAM) - where I managed a 4th place finish in slalom and a 6th place finish in GS.
Being on ski team again was like seamlessly slipping back to who I used to be. Being back in the routine of gate training, analysis, tuning, working out...it almost felt like nothing had even happened at all. After the hardest 3 years of my life, when it had felt like my whole world had been flipped upside down, I found myself exactly who I used to be. I realized nothing is ever truly lost - even when it feels like it is. And being surrounded by other adaptive athletes was invigorating and deeply inspiring. Every single one of my new teammates at NAC has been through a similar barrier - but came out stronger on the other side. I also realized, through all the frustration and heartache of losing the sport that was such a huge part of my life, it is such a gift to have the chance to relearn it when there was a time I thought it was lost forever.
Now that I'm back at school, I'm still able to train once a week with the Snow Summit FIS team, in preparation for the two other Para FIS races this season -- a NorAm in Eldora, CO, and US National Championships in Winter Park, CO. Both will be great opportunities to get my points down and get a good spot in National standings.
Looking forward to next season (2026) I am planning to take the winter semester off to train full time. My goal for the next season is to qualify for a World Cup start.
While I have struggled a lot in comparing myself to the racer I used to be, I also am beginning to realize the opportunity I have to take adaptive racing to a level I could have never before. Going to the World Cup and competing amongst the best in the world was a huge dream of mine as a young racer, but one I never was in a position to reach with my arthritis. Now as a sitting athlete, the far-fetched dream of the World Cup or Olympics (...Paralympics now) isn't so far fetched anymore. I owe it to my younger self to try with all that I've got.