By Elizabeth Phillips
EMS Press
Traverse City East MS
1st Place Division MS, News Writing
Personality Profile
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Lead captures attention, arouses curiosity; reason for sketch is made clear early in story
- Emphasizes fresh angle; individualizes person
- Colorful, lively presentation; effective form/style
- Reflects adequate research, sound interviewing techniques from a variety of sources
- Avoids encyclopedic listing of subject’s accomplishments
- Effective use of quotes
- Interesting; appeals to the emotions
- Proper diction/grammar
Olympian Kikkan Randall was skiing before she could walk. The day after her first birthday, Randall’s dad bought her the smallest pair of skis and ski boots and put her on the slopes. That’s what started five-time Olympic skier’s career. Randall was in Traverse City last month, sponsored by Fischer Skis, to speak to an audience about her career and her lifedIty Randall was a “big fan” of the Olympics from a young age because her aunt and uncle were in the Olympics 1976 and 1980. “I remember taking all their Olympic gear and wearing it around, and thinking, ‘Yeah, I’ll go too,’” she said. While Randall set the Olympics as a goal, she couldn’t decide on the sport. “I would try it in this sport and this sport,” she said. In the end, she tried basically all of them. Looking back, Randall wished she would have taken it a little easier, at least in middle school. “[I was] running around, trying to do so many things, that I could have probably slowed down, and enjoyed a few things a little more,” she said. But Randall thinks middle schoolers need to take advantage of the opportunity to try a lot of different sports instead of focusing on just one. “What’s cool about being in middle school is that you’re still at that age where you can do a lot of different activities which help build a great skill set,” she said. “In the years you transition from middle school to high school, you’ll most likely have found that sport that feels right. Then you can start learning about training, start setting goals for yourself and building up to them.” But Randall does think young people should set their sights high. “Not being afraid to be able to dream about where you want to go, without limitation. Not saying, ‘Oh, I’d love to be in the NBA, but I’d never go because I live in Michigan’,” she said. “Instead, say, ‘Yeah, making it into the NBA would be super cool.’ Find what it’s going to take to get to where you want to be.” While Randall ended up going to the Olympics as a cross country skier, it wasn’t love at first try for her. “It was kind of hard and kind of cold, so my parents coaxed me along with hot chocolate,” she said. But she really liked going off jumps. “I would actually ski up the hill just so I could ski down it and go off jumps,” she said. “It helped me gradually fall in love with it.” Randall has been in five Olympics. When she was 19, she went to Salt Lake City, Utah, and competed in the sprint freestyle. She placed 44th. This didn’t lessen her ambition, however. “The theme of those Olympics was ‘Light the Fire Within’. That’s exactly what happened to me as I stood in the crowd and watched those medal winners go on the podium,” she said. “I decided I wanted to go after that first ever [American] women’s medal,” Not everyone in her family was supportive, however. While her grandpa was excited about her first Olympics, he did not see it as a career. “He was the one who actually said that I need to go to college and get a real job,” she said. But Randall started to realize that she could take cross country skiing somewhere. “I thought that maybe I could make it a career,” she said. “I thought ‘I can win a medal someday, but it’s going to take a while.’ She sat down with her managers and started to develop a decade-long plan to go from the 44th place to the top step of the podium. “I finally had a roadmap,” she said. But there were some speed bumps. She was a gold medal favorite in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. “I thought I’d finally get to put a cross country skier on a cereal box,” she said. But she lost by 5/100 of a second. By now Randall had a dilemma. She and her husband were ready to settle down and start a family, but she knew that she had an opportunity to medal in the next Olympics. “Instead of seeing it as an either/or choice, I decided to do both,” In April 2016, Randall and her husband welcomed their son Breck, who is now three. After Breck was born, she began training for the team sprint event in the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics with teammate Jessie Diggins. “It was the most Olympic feeling race of my career,” she said. In her final lap, she was in third place behind Norway and Sweden. Diggins took the final lap and in the last turn, she swooped around the two people in front of her, tucked in and lunged for the finish line. When Randall looked up at the scoreboard, she saw Team USA is first place. They won the gold. The first ever cross country skiing medal for the United States. Then the unthinkable happened. Three months after she won the gold medal, Randall found a small peasized lump on her breast. She was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. “They found out it was a pretty aggressive form of breast cancer, and that it was on the move, which was pretty scary,” Randall completed the full line of treatment, but as of now, it appears that the treatment has been effective. “There were no detections of cancer cells after the chemotherapy, and now we’re just hopeful that it stays that way,” she said. “The tricky thing with cancer is that you can get rid of it once, but it can always come back.” In addition to her five Olympic games, Randall has competed in eight World Championships, winning a silver in 2009, a gold in 2013 and a bronze in 2017. But all of that pales compared to being a mom. “Being a parent is probably the most incredible thing in my life,” she said. Randall suggests we all think of our life as a story. “What do you want that story to be?” she urged. “ Find what makes your story unique.”