Q: How does friendship affect skiing?

A: Even though downhill skiing is a very individual sport, since you are the one who is going down the hill alone, it is really nice to have that community during practice because you have your friends there motivating you to do better. We move on as a team and everybody wants to see everybody else do well.

Q: What does practice look like?

A: Practice for preseason looks like your normal meeting up for a couple of hours after school every single day of the week, and then we get into the real season where we actually go skiing. We get on a bus around 4, then we are at the hill until 8, and then we take the bus back to the school. We only do that two days a week, mostly because it is just so hard to get out there, and we have to be out there for so many hours.

Q: What were some of the challenges that you have faced while you were skiing?

A: My biggest challenge in skiing actually happened in my freshmen year of high school. My longtime freestyle coach died of alcoholism. It made it difficult for me to decide whether or not skiing was something that I wanted to keep on doing.

Q: What do you think are the main causes of failures and losses?

A: Sometimes, it can just be an off day. You can be a really good athlete and have a really bad time in a specific day, and it is not necessarily because you are bad skier. It can just be because the conditions were bad or you had an off day.

Q: What is your goal for this year?

A: My goal for skiing would definitely be every year to work as hard as I can, and hopefully get the best result possible. Also, it is to really bond with everyone who is on the ski team, because it is my last year doing it.

Eric Lee can be contacted at [email protected]