Praise You- Fat Boy Slim

Cross Country Skiing may be considered an individual sport, but the average skier is part of a club or team and when I was listening to some of my older songs on my ipod I came across the song that I have used as my title today. There is a line in it that goes like this, "We've come a long long way together through the hard times and the good." This line, and the whole song actually, made me think of how hard I have worked alongside so many different team mates and how so much of my success as a skier I owe to my team mates.

I have had the opportunity to work with many different teams and clubs. As a 7-year-old I had team mates that would build snow forts with me and toboggan for hours after every race that we did. These team mates were the ones that helped me really learn the value of having friends in the sport. I am still friends with most of these people today and it is pretty fun to look back on all of our adventures at Lowney Lake

When I was 10 or 11 my family changed clubs and I was introduced to a whole new group of team mates. These team mates introduced me to the different levels of competition that lay ahead of me and taught me how to set goals and train to achieve these goals.

At age 17, I made the choice to change clubs again because I was the only girl left in the program and I felt that having female team mates and peers was important to my ski career. I made the right decision. This next set of team mates were some of the people that have shaped a lot of my life. I spent 2 years with team McBlennanhauser (sorry, inside joke) and loved every minute of it. This was a group of skiers that had the same goals that I did, loved to train, and were very able to push me in my day to day training. We had some very wacky road trips all over the country and I still have a mix cd that we made after my last year on the team and some of those songs still make me laugh.

When I turned 19 I moved up to the Thunder Bay National Team Development Centre. This was a crazy fun team too. I was one of 2 girls on a team of 8 athletes so I quickly learned how to hold my own against 6 boys. These were team mates who showed me the true meaning of the word team. We were on the road together for pretty much 8 months of the year and this fact alone taught us how the success or disappointment of one individual affected each and every member of the team. When someone succeeded it was a a success for the whole team and when someone failed it showed us all what we had to work on as a group.

Last year, at age 21, I moved out to Canmore to join the Alberta World Cup Academy-the team that I am on now. This team showed me how important it is to have such competitive team mates. On any given day any number of my female team mates can beat me. It is humbling, but it is also motivating. Some of my current team mates don't see the benefit of having peers to train with or learn from, but I appreciate all of the advantages that my team mates offer to me. My team mates are my coworkers, friends, competition, and motivation. I am lucky to have them

So, I want to "Praise you like I should" and say thanks to all of my team mates past, present, and future for pushing me every day and keeping it real.