Mike Terrell: TC teen makes mark in freestyle skiing

BY MIKE TERRELL
Outdoors Columnist

March 21, 2008 04:00 am

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While most 16-year-olds are still trying to decide what to do with their life after graduation, local teenager Haley Kanaskie has known since she was about eight years old.

The Traverse City West sophomore has her sights set on making the 2010 Olympics as a freestyle skier, and, according to those in the know, Kanaskie has an excellent chance.

She just finished contending in the USSA Jr. Olympics Slope national finals at Steamboat Springs, Colo., earlier this month, and rocketed up the standings for the halfpipe. Competing against 32 of the best 18-under females who qualified for the event, Kanaskie pulled out a fourth place finish with a starting rank of 49. She also placed fifth in both slopestyle and aerials and was elevated to membership on the Junior Olympic training team, which is just a step below making the Olympic team.

"My goal next season is to win the national title, which should put me on the team for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver," said the lithe teenager when I spoke to her at her home recently. "This has been my goal since I was eight- or nine-years-old. I love skiing and doing the slopestyle and halfpipe events."

The amazing thing is that this is only her fourth season of freestyle skiing and only her third in competition.

"Haley started skiing when she was only two and took to it with a passion," said her father Bob Kanaskie. "From about the age of eight she started expressing a desire to compete in the Olympics some day. As most kids do, she started out in race training, but got bored with running gates after a couple years. She started hanging around the terrain parks more than the race course.

"At the start of the 2005 season Haley asked to compete in terrain park freestyle events instead of racing, and, to support her enthusiasm, we agreed to let her try it. Now, three years later, she has become the number one terrain park girl in Michigan and has excelled at all local and USASA events she has entered in the last three years," Kanaskie said.

In those three years she has won gold in over 20 USASA events, according to her father, and is currently tied in the rankings for first place in that national series; beating other freestyle skiers from Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska and the Lake Tahoe region.

She has also won the Crystal Mountain -- her home ski hill -- Cammy Potter Open three years in a row, the Cannonsburg Rare Air Fest Slopestyle Open two years running, and the Boyne Mountain Jeep Terrain Park Challenge in 2006 and 2007. She took fifth place overall at the National Jeep Terrain Park Challenge held at Squaw Valley in 2006.

Having dominated the local scene for the last three years Kanaskie was invited to try out for the Midwest Freestyle Association and US Ski Team at Boyne Mountain this past February, where she won the slopestyle event and placed second in the Superpipe. That won her an invite to the USSA Central Division Championships, held later in February at Hylands Ski Area in Minneapolis, where she again won both slopestyle and the big air events.

Winning those events earned her a spot in the Junior Olympic finals at Steamboat Springs, where, according to her father, they believe she is the first Michigan girl to ever compete at that level in this relatively new Olympic sport. Quite an honor.

It's not an easy schedule and requires a lot of preparation time in both event schedules and training time.

"It's really busy and crazy some times, but I love what I'm doing," said the 16-year-old. "My parents have been great in supporting my quest, and the teachers at West have also been great in working with me on assignments and homework when I'm traveling to events."

When asked about social time with her peers, she said that she still finds time to have fun and a life outside skiing.

"I still enjoy going skiing with my friends at Crystal, and we hang around together when I'm not traveling," she laughed. "I still find time to be a teenager, and softball season is starting up, which I really look forward to."

Freestyle skiing is a fairly new discipline to the Olympics, but it's one that allows Heartland skiers to compete on an even level with skiers from other parts of the country, according to Haley's father.

"We have some fantastic terrain parks in the Midwest. You don't need a mountain to excel in the terrain park discipline," Kanaskie enthused. "Following Haley around this season, I've seen some other kids coming up that I think will allow this Central Division team to compete quite nicely with other regions of the country for the Olympic spots on the freestyle team."

That would be nice to see, especially at the next Olympic Games, which will be held right here in North America year after next. What a treat it would be to root for a hometown gal. A lot has to happen and go right, but if determination, preparation and attitude are big factors, Haley Kanaskie has a leg up on the others.

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