We haven’t had many opportunities to talk about Alpine Meadows Freestyle Team alumnus K.C. Oakley at Unofficial Alpine. For years, many of us watched K.C. burn the zipper line on Yellow chair, or run an impressive line down Squaw Valley’s North Bowl in the latest Far West Freestyle mogul event. Back around 2007, the world was beginning to notice K.C.Oakley.
And then, K.C. took a little detour on her route to becoming a member of the US Freestyle Ski Team. She enrolled at Cal Berkeley, determined to get a degree before committing to a life of skiing. She managed to graduate in a little over 3.5 years, even while maintaining her ski training during the winter quarters.
She has since returned to skiing competitively full time and joined the US Freestyle Ski Team in 2011. She had several top ten finishes on the World Cup mogul circuit and was awarded the honor of World Cup Rookie Of The Year in 2011. This season, Oakley has her eyes set on securing a spot on the US Olympic Mogul team to compete in Sochi, Russia next February.
K.C. was profiled this week by a local Bay Area NBC affiliate. It’s an awesome insight into an amazing skier with roots at Alpine Meadows. You can also follow this link to the story to see additional photos and video.
Hmmm….some technical difficulties getting the video to embed properly here. Apparently NBC Videos will not embed properly on our platform. You can follow the link above or click the pic below to see the video. Apologies….
Oakley is also one of the athletes that will be profiled in the film Cusp Of Glory: A Tahoe Coaches’ Legacy. Oakley was one of Clay Beck’s athletes, and coincidentally was also his cousin. It was always fun to watch the banter between the two as a coach and athlete. After Clay’s passing in 2008, Oakley joined the Squaw Valley Freestyle team to continue her focus on mogul skiing. Cusp of Glory will be showing on January 19th at the Plaza Bar in Squaw Valley.
Learn more about K.C. Oakley at her personal site.
you go Girl!
Alpine Meadows can be proud of K.C. Oakley (moguls), Scotty Bahrke (aerials), and Brita Sigourney and David Wise (ski halfpipe), who are all potential Olympics contenders! It could come down to the wire (mid-January), unless there are some break-out performances early on, which would establish them as the best medal hopefuls. I hope all freestyle/freeski enthusiasts will show up to the Northstar Grand Prix event on January 10th, where locals, David Wise and Brita Sigourney, will be competing in the ski halfpipe event! Please keep your collective fingers crossed for all of them, as they go into their own set of Olympic qualifiers. I have a good feeling that Alpine Meadows will be well represented at the 2014 Olympics! 🙂