2 Monmouth County Natives Headed To Winter Olympics

RUMSON, NJ — Next month, this tiny sliver of New Jersey will send not one, but two young adults to compete in the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Meghan Tierney, 25, will compete for Team USA in snowboarding. Tierney now lives in Colorado but she grew up in Rumson and Little Silver. Like so many elite snowboarders, she moved out West at a young age to train, and got her high school degree online.

Here is Tierney's Team USA profile. This is not her first Olympics; she competed in 2018 in Pyeongchang in snowboardcross, where she finished 17th in the world.

And Charlie Volker, 24, of Fair Haven, will compete in the bobsled.

Volker is a 2015 graduate of Rumson-Fair Haven High School, where he was a football and track star for the Bulldogs.

According to his school district biography, Volker was All-State and All-Shore as a high school running back and track sprinter. He went on to Princeton University, where he continued to play football and run track.

Volker was ranked No. 7 of all-time at Princeton in rushing yards. After graduating in 2019, he actually planned to try out for the NFL. He was training at a football camp in North Jersey when COVID abruptly shut down all training camps in the spring of 2020.

Volker's NFL dreams were derailed.

But one of Volker’s training coaches, and a former bobsledder himself, suggested he might want to look into bobsledding, particularly because he had the pushing strength and speed needed to push the sled on ice.

Volker's online stats in the 40-yard dash and broad jump qualified him for the USA Bobsled/Skeleton Team. From there, he was invited to the Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York to try out at team trials.

In December 2020, he successfully earned a spot on the U.S. National Team — less than 18 months after he picked up the sport.

Volker has been training in Lake Placid ever since. This will be his very first Olympics.

Look for Volker in both the two-man and the four-man bobsled races. He has the position of “brakeman," meaning you will find him in the very back of the sleds; he is responsible for the all-important job of pulling the brakes at the end of the race to stop the sled.

“Charlie was one of the hardest working student-athletes we have ever seen here at Rumson-Fair Haven, on and off the field," said Chris Lanzalotto, vice principal of athletics and student activities. "I am extremely proud of all he has accomplished and cannot wait to see him represent our country on the USA Bobsled Team.”

Here is Volker's Team USA profile.

The 2022 Winter Olympics begin Feb. 4 and they will last through Feb. 20.

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This article originally appeared on the Rumson-Fair Haven Patch