Team Selection
It is all about the Oreos! Teammate, Mike Hafer and I roomed together in Vail for mid-season training. He said I could have some of his Oreos. I said cool and then proceeded to eat pretty much the entire package! So in Big Sky during National Academy, I gave him a brand new package. He said we would not eat them until we were both on the team again. Those Oreos never tasted so good!!!!
I made it! This was the first time I had ever tried out as an incumbent. It was my fifth tryout in total so I had some experience.
The snow was…challenging. We skied some outside ski turns, then some short turns staying in a corridor on what felt like golf ball sized marbles, then stem christies to wedge christies, and finally 5 short turns, 3 medium turns, and 5 short turns. That was our morning.
In the afternoon, the snow stayed firm and we did 4 tasks:
We did 5 short turns, 3 medium turns, 5 short turns - repeat. We also had to do some Movement Analysis on the person skiing this task.
We did lane changes - series of 5 short turns with the 5th one taking you into a medium turn.
We did short turns across the fall line.
We did basic parallel with our poles at half shaft and in manky snow.
The snow conditions may have been the most challenging…EVER! Or at least in the last 17 years!
A lot of people say that a current team member has a lot to lose. I see it differently. I saw it as an opportunity to prove myself. However, if I was unsuccessful, no one was going to take away the fact that at one point in my life, I had made the team.
The selection process is crazy. You are competing against yourself and some of your closest friends. You never know how you are doing. Some things feel great and others you wish you could hike back up the hill and have a re-do. It is all about moving forward and not looking back.
There was a cut after two days. Some people were surprised they made it through. Some people were disappointed. The thing I don’t love about the selection process is that it creates an us vs. them at the end. There are those that made it and those that did not. I made a promise with myself a few years ago that if I were lucky enough to make it, I would reach out to those who were unsuccessful. I always wanted someone to do this for me and it never happened. So that is what I do. I reach out. I check in and take the risk just to see how the other person is doing. Because I genuinely care about him or her.
I am glad I made it again. It was not easy. It felt different than the first time, not in a good or bad way. Just in a different. Maybe I have grown. Maybe I hit the ground running in the last term so I only know that as the norm.
I put out a message on social media the day after that if people struggle with this decision and are disappointed to talk to someone, anyone, preferably someone trained in mental health because it is so important. So important.