Keri Herman will compete in the inaugural slopestyle skiing event in the Olympics Tuesday. The Minnesota native was a die-hard hockey player growing up.
Photo courtesy of USA Skiing/Steven Korneich
Want to find out which winter sport will be the newest craze? Just follow Keri Herman.
The Minnesota native has a knack for getting involved in sports that explode in popularity after she gets great at them. She's the ultimate "I did it before it was cool" athlete.
Hockey is in Herman's blood, though shesaid she doesn't pay as much attention to the sportnow that she is a decorated freestyle skier.
Photo courtesy of the Herman family
The world will get a chance to see slopestyle skiing in the Olympics for the first time ever, beginning at 1 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday, and Herman will be one of the pioneering athletes to tackle the course that features rails, monstrous jumps and high speeds at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. While a large number of athletes in the Olympic Games have been groomed for Olympic glory in their specific sports, and trained for years as teens, Herman is the opposite.
Her high school years only featured sporadic, recreational skiing. Instead, she devoted her time to ice hockey as a student at
Visitation (Mendota Heights, Minn.) during a time when women's hockey was just growing to an international level. The school formed a co-op squad called St. Paul United, a common occurrence in the Upper Midwest.
"I remember being on the very first girls team in Bloomington, Minn., and
there being so few teams, we would have to join boys leagues to
play," Herman said via email from Sochi. "When I graduated high school there were almost 200 girls varsity
teams in the state. It was so amazing how fast the sport grew and
became awesome."
Hockey was natural for Herman. Her dad, uncle and brother all played hockey at a high level. By the time she graduated in 2001, she had completed six years of varsity competition. And she was good at it, making the All-Conference Team and earning team MVP honors as a center. She said she was "aggressive, determined, one-track-minded in pursuit of the puck and a game-faced jokester."
See the MaxPreps "From Students to Sochi" homepage, with links to more Olympics contentThe grind of hockey was not easy to make it through all those years, and though she likely had some college hockey options, Herman decided to put the sport in her past after high school. She voyaged west to the University of Denver to study finance and marketing and it was there that she discovered freestyle skiing.
The family used to take trips to Colorado for ski vacations (though mom Diana Herman wanted to go to the beach), and the kids also had season passes to a local small hill in Minnesota. She took advantage of the outdoors once she moved to Colorado and met a group of people who enjoyed hanging out at the terrain parks. The result of that is easily evident, as Herman will be barreling down the hill in Sochi for Team USA.
"She did it completely for fun — she would go up on weekends and hang out in the park with some pros and she taught herself," her mother said. "She totally started doing it because it was fun and found people that had the same kind of personality and enthusiasm. She said for first time she met people who thought and acted like her. She always wanted to try sports that other girls weren’t doing."
Keri Herman, 31
Photo courtesy of USA Skiing/Tom Zikas
Herman said she actually didn't have much interest in skiing when she was younger. Once she got to the varsity level, hockey coaches discouraged players from participating in skiing, citing possible injuries. And she was fine with that. She loved hockey.
"I remember sneaking once, maybe in sixth or seventh grade, but that's the only time I can remember," she said.
The decision to stop playing didn't cause any drama in the family, either.
"I would say we were completely comfortable. There were so many early-morning practices, or middle of the night. They tended to get the worst ice time and it really consumed her life. She loved it and loved the friends. But it was her choice and we were fine with it," Diana said.
Keri dabbled in other sports growing up, but nothing significant. She tried swimming for a bit (mom said she didn't like it because she couldn't talk underwater) and also softball.
Now she's competing for a gold medal in the Olympics. It's a story that many people wouldn't believe, how a girl from a flat part of the country picked up freestyle skiing while she was in college and made it to the Olympics. To coach Ted Cheesebrough, it all makes sense.
"If someone would have told me in the past that Keri would be a world-class athlete, I actually would have believed it, but it's because of one thing: Keri has that 'It' factor — she has that 'Jam' to her," said Cheesebrough, an assistant coach in Keri's final season. "Keri is equal parts competitive, cool, ambitious, laissez-faire, lively, dynamic and animated. And I loved coaching her for all of those reasons. She lives life with mega-wattage and her smile is going to light up that mountain. She was a joy to coach, vibrant and fun.
"She always seemed ready to compete and to succeed, while still coming across as very relaxed about it."
She's indeed ready to compete in Sochi. And she's also ready for whatever else life might throw her way.
"I think you should do whatever you have the most fun doing, whether it's one sport or many," Keri said. "I always keep my mind open to new opportunities that present themselves and never turn down an opportunity."
