{"id":4630,"date":"2020-05-29T12:46:31","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T16:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=4630"},"modified":"2020-05-29T12:46:31","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T16:46:31","slug":"dreaming-without-limitations-kikkan-randalls-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=4630","title":{"rendered":"Dreaming without limitations: Kikkan Randall&#8217;s story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Elizabeth Phillips<\/strong><br \/>\nEMS Press<br \/>\nTraverse City East MS<br \/>\n1st Place Division MS, News Writing<br \/>\nPersonality Profile<\/p>\n<p><b>JUDGING CRITERIA<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lead captures attention, arouses curiosity; reason for sketch is made clear early in story<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Emphasizes fresh angle; individualizes person<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Colorful, lively presentation; effective form\/style<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reflects adequate research, sound interviewing techniques from a variety of sources<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Avoids encyclopedic listing of subject\u2019s accomplishments<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Effective use of quotes<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Interesting; appeals to the emotions<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proper diction\/grammar<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Olympian Kikkan Randall was skiing before she could walk. The day after her first birthday, Randall\u2019s dad bought her the smallest pair of skis and ski boots and put her on the slopes. That\u2019s what started five-time Olympic skier\u2019s 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 \u201cbig fan\u201d of the Olympics from a young age because her aunt and uncle were in the Olympics 1976 and 1980. \u201cI remember taking all their Olympic gear and wearing it around, and thinking, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ll go too,\u2019\u201d she said. While Randall set the Olympics as a goal, she couldn\u2019t decide on the sport. \u201cI would try it in this sport and this sport,\u201d 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. \u201c[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,\u201d 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. \u201cWhat\u2019s cool about being in middle school is that you\u2019re still at that age where you can do a lot of different activities which help build a great skill set,\u201d she said. \u201cIn the years you transition from middle school to high school, you\u2019ll 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.\u201d But Randall does think young people should set their sights high. \u201cNot being afraid to be able to dream about where you want to go, without limitation. Not saying, \u2018Oh, I\u2019d love to be in the NBA, but I\u2019d never go because I live in Michigan\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cInstead, say, \u2018Yeah, making it into the NBA would be super cool.\u2019 Find what it\u2019s going to take to get to where you want to be.\u201d While Randall ended up going to the Olympics as a cross country skier, it wasn\u2019t love at first try for her. \u201cIt was kind of hard and kind of cold, so my parents coaxed me along with hot chocolate,\u201d she said. But she really liked going off jumps. \u201cI would actually ski up the hill just so I could ski down it and go off jumps,\u201d she said. \u201cIt helped me gradually fall in love with it.\u201d 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\u2019t lessen her ambition, however. \u201cThe theme of those Olympics was \u2018Light the Fire Within\u2019. That\u2019s exactly what happened to me as I stood in the crowd and watched those medal winners go on the podium,\u201d she said. \u201cI decided I wanted to go after that first ever [American] women\u2019s medal,\u201d 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. \u201cHe was the one who actually said that I need to go to college and get a real job,\u201d she said. But Randall started to realize that she could take cross country skiing somewhere. \u201cI thought that maybe I could make it a career,\u201d she said. \u201cI thought \u2018I can win a medal someday, but it\u2019s going to take a while.\u2019 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. \u201cI finally had a roadmap,\u201d she said. But there were some speed bumps. She was a gold medal favorite in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. \u201cI thought I\u2019d finally get to put a cross country skier on a cereal box,\u201d 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. \u201cInstead of seeing it as an either\/or choice, I decided to do both,\u201d 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. \u201cIt was the most Olympic feeling race of my career,\u201d 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. \u201cThey found out it was a pretty aggressive form of breast cancer, and that it was on the move, which was pretty scary,\u201d Randall completed the full line of treatment, but as of now, it appears that the treatment has been effective. \u201cThere were no detections of cancer cells after the chemotherapy, and now we\u2019re just hopeful that it stays that way,\u201d she said. \u201cThe tricky thing with cancer is that you can get rid of it once, but it can always come back.\u201d 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. \u201cBeing a parent is probably the most incredible thing in my life,\u201d she said. Randall suggests we all think of our life as a story. \u201cWhat do you want that story to be?\u201d she urged. \u201c Find what makes your story unique.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":4631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,63],"tags":[175,24],"class_list":["post-4630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","category-nw","category-personalityprofile-nw","tag-2019-20","tag-divisionms","post_format-post-format-image","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Issue-1-page-10.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Issue-1-page-10.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Joel Beeker","author_link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?author=9"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Issue-1-page-10.jpg?fit=1620%2C1804&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6K0n6-1cG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}