With the winter Olympics around the corner, national pride will be beaming across the world as countries go for gold. The Whitman community will be paying particularly close attention to Holly Brooks, a 2004 graduate who will be competing on the U.S. cross country ski team.
Her modest beginnings as a Junior Olympics competitor and college-level skier led to remarkable racing results as a professional and a place on the four-woman Olympic national team.
Brooks’ name was initially cut from the list of skiers that were to represent the United States in Vacouver, Canada. But due to a fifth, additional spot allowed by a newly installed Olympic quota system, the former Whittie managed to make it on the team. The good news followed days of uneasy anticipation.
“I’m not going to lie; it’s been pretty horrible,” she said in a recent interview with KTUU News in Anchorage. “You go through phases: I would kind of get excited in my mind then pessimistic in my mind. I’ve gone through a little bit of an emotional roller coaster the past couple of days. I’m just glad that part’s over.”
Brooks was a sociology-environmental studies major who spent all four years of college on Whitman’s cross country ski team. She also participated in the first Semester in the West program at Whitman.
“It was a wonderful way to experience the West but I wasn’t in shape that winter,” Brooks said in an interview with FasterSkier.com last December.
Her athletic performance also suffered during her last year at Whitman due to a sinus infection that prevented her from advancing to nationals.
Not allowing that to stop her from doing what she loved, she graduated from college and moved on to coach at the Maine Winter Sports Center. Brooks relocated to what is now her current home in Anchorage, Alaska and started coaching the Alaska Winter Stars; she was later named head coach of the ski team at West High School, where she remained for three years. She now coaches the juniors, masters and women’s-only programs at Alaska Pacific University.
Balancing her coaching career with her competing career, Brooks still continued to succeed as a cross country skier. In 2008 she won the Tour of Anchorage marathon and dominated again the following season. This summer, a rare health condition briefly interrupted her success. She managed to recover over the course of several months, and bounced back stronger than ever.
“I’ve always loved skiing and wanted to be better but I was pretty far away from big success . . . I suppose you could say that I’m a ‘late bloomer,'” Brooks said.
After her brief hiatus, Brooks beat out over 87 athletes in November as she won four of six races at SuperTour, a series of events that take place in West Yellowstone, Mont. Her back-to-back wins put her on the radar for the Olympic roster.
At the U.S. National Championships this past January, Brooks placed a close second in the 20-kilometer classic with a time of 1:14.29.2, a mere 10 seconds behind top skier Kikkan Randall. Brooks also finished fourth in the classic sprint race.
Brooks got a call late January: a mere few weeks before the games are set to begin: and was invited to join the U.S. Olympic Team.
“It was an awesome, awesome feeling,” she said in her interview with KTUU. “It’s taking a while for it to set in. I guess just hearing people’s reactions and excitement and getting to call my mom and dad, talking to everyone, it’s finally sinking in, but I don’t think you can really appreciate it until you’re in the actual atmosphere.
According to an interview featured on the U.S. Ski Team Web site, Brooks is “thankful for all the support [she’s] received from [her] family, [her] loving husband Rob, Alaska Pacific University and all of the Nordic Ski Center members, the ski community of Anchorage, and [her] wonderful friends.”
The 2010 Vancouver Olympic games are set to open on Feb. 12. Up until then, Brooks will be training with the rest of the U.S. skiers at the Canmore Nordic Centre in Alberta, Canada. Brooks is recording an account of her Olympic experience on her blog, hollyskis.blogspot.com.
