For the last eight months, she felt like a normal teenager again. Hanging out with friends at the lake. Hiking in Glacier National Park. Going to high school football games and attending classes just like any other 15-year-old sophomore.
Then winter arrived, covering the slopes with snow, beckoning to one of America’s great skiers.
Maggie Voisin is back.
Less than a year after she vaulted herself into the Winter Olympics, becoming the youngest member of Team USA in a generation, Whitefish’s freeskiing phenom is back flying over jumps with that acrobatic, awe-inspiring flare.
A few weeks ago, Voisin returned to Park City, Utah, the headquarters of the U.S. Ski Team and where most of the nation’s best skiers and snowboarders train during the competitive winter season. Barely old enough to drive, Voisin is one of the sport’s rising stars; she’s a finalist for FREESKIER Magazine’s 2014 Skier of the Year contest, alongside four others who are Olympians and all-time greats.
As the season approaches, Voisin said her energy is fully restored and her lower leg is fully healed.
“I’m ready to get back out there,” she told the Beacon in an interview recently. “I’ve been waiting forever it feels like. It’s finally time. I’m really excited.”
Her season will officially launch in Breckenridge, Colorado, at the Dew Tour Mountain Championships, Dec. 11-14, a four-day snowboard and freeski competition that happens to land on Voisin’s 16th birthday.
The event will be the first formal slopestyle competition for Voisin since she crashed and broke a bone in her leg while training at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia last February. The fractured fibula sidelined her from competition, abruptly ending her milestone season.
In the aftermath of the crash, Voisin was forced to stay off skis for several months, dealing with the first major injury in her young career.
But, as she describes it now, it became a blessing in many ways. After all, not many 15-year-olds ever experience a whirlwind quite like Voisin did this past year.
Last winter she emerged on the national stage, capturing the attention of the professional skiing world as a precocious star who was a force to be reckoned with. She held her own against the sport’s best females in World Cup competition and earned a spot on Team USA for the Winter Olympics.
At the Winter X Games, she narrowly missed out on a gold medal after an eye-opening run that included a switch 1080, a rare, spinning aerial that brought fans and fellow competitors to their feet.
“That was a crazy year,” she said. “To be honest, I was pretty burnt out when it was over. Being home and having that much time to relax and recoup from the whole year and the Olympics has been very, very important.”
While undergoing rehabilitation for her broken fibula, she relaxed. She didn’t ski until July, when she traveled to Canada for a couple days of turns. She followed a strict weight-lifting regimen in the gym, training through an official Team USA program.
But for the most part, she blended in as a normal teenager.
“It was cool to get that high school experience back,” she said. “There’s no need to grow up too quick. I loved coming home and hanging out with my friends and not worrying about my skiing and just being a normal teenager.”
She enrolled at Whitefish High School in the fall and took classes for the first quarter. She attended football games and cheered on her older brother Michael.
While restoring a sense of normalcy, it also stoked the flames. As the winter approached, the more anxious she was to get back on skis.
“(My coaches) have held me back,” she said. “It was good to get back on the snow and everything felt good. It all came right back to me. Now I’ve been training more and I’ve got that fire to start the season.”
This season won’t have the building anticipation of the Olympics, but there are still plenty of elite competitions that Voisin has her sights set on.
She was one of the first athletes invited to this year’s Winter X Games, Jan. 22-25 in Aspen, Colorado. Last year she became one of the youngest competitors at the prestigious event, and the youngest medalist, according to ESPN.
“I cannot wait. I’ve never had so much fun competing as I did last year,” she said. “I’d always wanted to do X Games since I was 12 years old. It was crazy, three years later there I was.”
Canadian Kay Turski edged Voisin for first place at last year’s event, and the youngster from Whitefish has a plan to pursue gold once again.
“I have a run picked out in the back of my head and have been working toward those tricks,” she said.
Along with X Games, Voisin will compete in the top Grand Prix and Dew Tour events across the country. She also plans to appear in a few ski films.
It will all come and go very quickly, as she knows, and before long she’ll be back in Whitefish.
For now, she’s savoring this exciting, rare opportunity.
“Going into last year, it was all about experience. This year, I’ve been through it, I’ve done it,” she said. “I don’t want to put any pressure on myself to keep up. Obviously I want to do well. But I feel like to me it’s about having fun.”