Beatrix Lever - Montana State Skiing
My dad says that my parents were at a ski mountain one afternoon and I was running around and I apparently went around to a pair of skis and started kicking my feet and trying to put my foot into the bindings. And right away he knew that he had to get me my own pair of skis. So when I was 14 months old, essentially right when I started walking, I started skiing. I grew up in Montreal and went to school in French there, but my family would travel down to Whiteface Mountain in upstate New York every weekend. We eventually built a cottage there, and that’s where I started ski racing when I was seven years old. Once I reached the over-16-age category, I was on the Quebec provincial team based out of Montreal where we would do all of our dryland training and weightlifting, and during the competitive season we would mostly just travel around North America for competitions and in the summers we go abroad to South America and Europe for training on glaciers.
Skiing has really taught me a lot about resilience and persistence. I think it’s been really a humbling experience. I’ve been injured a number of times, and I know that’s the same for a lot of my teammates and fellow student-athletes and competitors, and being able to relate to others through that adversity that we’ve faced together, it kind of brings us together. In times like that where you really feel alone. And it’s really difficult, but that’s when you begin to appreciate your teammates and that’s when you really understand how much of a family you are with your teammates and really what the sport is all about. It’s about forming those relationships, and those friendships and just making each other grow and becoming a better person. It feels like it’s been an experience that’s preparing me for the next step in my life.
When I broke my leg in 2016, I wasn’t able to ski for over a year. And I felt really lost. Skiing is such a big part of my identity; I didn’t really know who I was anymore. And because I wasn’t able to be on snow, I just really struggled, mentally, but that’s also when I realized what my passions are. In skiing, we miss a lot of school to travel. Unlike most other sports, people get to practice right after school, but you can’t necessarily go to a ski mountain all the time right after school. So that makes it kind of difficult and unique; so we’ll mostly just miss big chunks of school at a time to go and compete and train. So, not being able to do that I started tuning into what my interests were in my studies. And then I brought that with me into college and found a program that interested me and was able to create my own degree which I’m really passionate about.
Breaking my leg also stunted my recruiting process. So I decided to take a gap year and hadn’t initially even considered Montana State, as I didn’t really know about it. I was always more of a speed skier, and our head coach here was on the US ski team as a speed skier, and he had gone through injuries and he really sympathized with me. He was really open and wanted to have me on the team, and all the other girls on the team were Canadians and I just felt like it was the right fit for me, like I would be properly supported. We’d have good resources, and that it would really help me get back on track post-injury.
Then, my freshman year, in November, I had a really big accident and had a traumatic brain injury. And so that made me more susceptible to having recurring concussions. And so I had another one last February. And actually, that’s what ended my career, which I wasn’t expecting because, well, first of all, I always thought me breaking my leg was going to be the most devastating and biggest injury of my life. I never really expected to have to go through something like that again.
I really saw coming to college as a stepping stone for me to move on to the Canadian national team afterwards. And I always dreamed of going to the Olympics. But that really ended up not being the case. So I was team captain last year, and we had seven incoming athletes. It was a pretty big change and dynamic; we had a lot of seniors that graduated and a lot of new freshmen had some transfers. So, I felt I was really excited to have this opportunity to be a leader, even as a sophomore as an underclassman. And I really loved representing them on our SAAC and taking on all these initiatives. And when I was faced with having to decide about medically retiring, I felt comforted in knowing that I would still be able to have that role within my team, and even though I’m not competing, I’m still going to be an assistant volunteer coach. That’s been the saving grace for me: knowing that even though I medically retired, I’m still a part of this community and that my life continues after sport.
Aside from injuries, the biggest struggle for myself and for other athletes that I’ve noticed is when you have to face retirement, especially for college students post-graduation. It’s scary because you’re graduating college you have to think about getting a job, but you’re also coming towards the end point in your career. One initiative that I have for myself personally is to help on my campus and bring up to the conferences, providing our student-athletes with resources when they’re injured and for when they’re going to graduate. When they face retirement, how can we help them overcome those obstacles and be more prepared for life after sport?
Like many athletes, my experience hasn’t been linear. I think we all want it to be that way – we all see where we are now and our goal and we think, “Okay, if I do everything right it’s going to be a perfectly straight line,” but it never ends up being like that. It’s all up and down and bumps in the road and then you eventually might not get to that point B where you were looking on, you find a point C. What I want people to know is that it’s okay that you aren’t necessarily reaching the end goal that you initially had in mind. Just because you’re at a different place and you have new goals, it doesn’t mean that you failed. It just means that things changed, and it’s okay.
In retrospect, I think I would tell myself not to worry so much about the outcome, and the results and just be present in the moment and try to enjoy myself as much as possible. Really just be and let your soul compete and go for it.
