Catching up with Gaylord graduate and NMU skier Reagan Olli

GAYLORD – Like most people in and around athletics, the COVID-19 pandemic put Reagan Olli through an up-and-down stretch over two years.

When the Gaylord alum was heading into what would have been her final high school season, the world turned to deal with a global pandemic and the sports world came to a halt.

That cost Olli that senior season in soccer, while also wiping out what would have been her freshman season in college, putting the talented multi-sport athlete in a waiting game.

Now, back on mountains across the Midwest competing for the Northern Michigan University alpine ski team, Olli is just settling down after an outstanding first season of college competition.

“This year was just kind of a whirlwind,” said Olli, reflecting on her inaugural college season. “We expected to do well, but we exceeded expectations for everyone at the university and all of us as a team.”

Olli was a standout for one of the best womens alpine ski teams in the entirety of the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association this past season, earning second-team All-American honors for her performance in the USCSA Nationals in upstate New York and while being honored as one of NMU’s Breakthrough Athletes of the Year in this year’s group of Wildcat Award winners.

Olli has become engrained in the Marquette area, with her love of Marquette Mountain making it easy to fall in love with her college town. Having a place like that available for training for someone like Olli is what makes NMU special.

The ability to train and compete as a team is something that has stuck out to Olli as a big difference from her time in Gaylord to her college career. Despite her successful high school career, she finds it more rewarding to be a part of a team victory.

“I won states in high school twice, but that is more of an individual accomplishment,” Olli said. “We had so much team success this year, and I have a lot of good teammates who are really talented skiers.”

Having that kind of talent around during training can be the extra push a competitive person like Olli needs to push herself to continue to improve.

“When you have teammates who are at the same level as you or a little bit above or a little bit below, it makes everything a little bit more fun because you have a little bit more competition, you’re always chasing the person in front of you,” Olli said. “Garret (Lundteigen) on the men’s team is a really talented skier, so it’s cool to watch him because you can learn from him.”

All that waiting from her nearly two years off of competing seemingly did not affect what she could accomplish this year. The extra training and new team element helped Olli thrive in her first season for the Wildcats’ alpine ski team, consistently leading a womens team that won every USCSA event they competed in this season, outside of nationals.

Individually, Olli was arguably the team’s best Slalom competitor, taking home a first-place finish in the Slalom at Wild Mountain in Taylor Falls, Minnesota, a second-place finish at Spirit Mountain in Duluth, Minnesota, and a third-place finish at Giants Ridge in St. Louis County, Minnesota before a second-place finish at the USCSA Regionals, hosted by NMU in Marquette, helped her team qualify for the USCSA Nationals at Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid, New York from March 8-12.

“We kind of felt like we proved ourselves too,” Olli said. “The whole New York trip was so great, it’s always different going out east because it’s so icy, but it was really great.”

The NMU women finished in sixth place when it was all said in done, while Olli’s 12th-place finish was good enough to earn her second-team all-American honors. She was also named a first-team scholar all-American and was honored as a Breakout Athlete of the Year in NMU’s fourth annual Wildcat Awards on May 24.

Like with every sport, the end of a season brings off-season training and conditioning. However, the offseason training regimen for a sport like skiing is different than a typical sport like football, baseball or volleyball. Without snow, there isn’t much actual practice that can be done.

“Skiing is a hard offseason sport. We try to train for as long as we can,” Olli said. “Even after nationals we were just out on the hill, but as soon as the snow gets bad, we have to stop.

While she stops her technical ski training once the snow is unusable, the training program goes on throughout the summer and fall with the strength and conditioning required for the athletes. A lot of skiing strength training revolves around the lower body; squats, deadlifts, and any lower body workout you can think of to keep the legs and core of the skiers in top condition.

One thing that skiers like Olli do a lot of is mountain biking, because while not a perfect substitute for skiing, the motion and balance incorporated with mountain biking are somewhat comparable.

“It’s not super comparable to skiing but it helps with the balance and aerobic part of it,” Olli said.

Part of what has drawn Olli to skiing her whole life is the chase for unattainable perfection. She says that, coupled with the exhilaration of laying down a perfect run, is what she enjoys the most about skiing.

“There is no perfection in skiing, and everyone does it differently. It’s exhilarating.”

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Following up with former Gaylord state champion skier Reagan Olli