Senior Bruns skis the slopes of success

Ever since she was just two years old, senior Lucy Bruns has been dominating the mountains. She grew up skiing in Utah, and when she turned ten she started lessons. However, there was a problem — she was way too good and outskied her own instructor. The people who ran the lessons asked her if they could stop doing the lessons because it wasn’t fair to the instructor. That was just the beginning of her list of accomplishments when it came to skiing. 

What Bruns does specifically is mogul skiing, which is typically a long, steep hill with a lot of (either natural or man-made) bumps or mounds.

Mogul skiing involves navigating these bumps by absorbing them with your legs, making quick turns, and maintaining balance and rhythm. She started doing moguls at Northstar and was on a team there for about five years. She went there because she was too young to do a race for a team in Kirkwood, which is south of Lake Tahoe.

Due to missing a lot of school, Bruns has to manage her time efficiently. She does a lot of independent work and a lot of communication with teachers, and maybe some “sucking up” to them as well. While away on her trips, Bruns would always make sure to give herself time to do her work. Things can definitely get a little overwhelming for her when she has to manage a lot, especially trying to find time to have fun and hang out with her friends. Though, a lot of the stress is mediated through the communication she does with her teachers, even despite sometimes coming back to five tests needing to be made up.

Throughout the summer, she would go to Utah and ski out of the Utah Olympic Park and do training there because they have a water ramp setup. Back in Tahoe, her team has a setup that includes airbags and trampolines. She would also go to Mount Hood in Oregon, which has a glacier, so they’d have regular access to snow. She recently just got back from Austria after spending a week there on a glacier. Two years prior, she was in Idre Fjall, Sweden. She will do a lot of traveling before the season actually starts, and she and her team can start training in Tahoe and other local places.

A sport like this doesn’t come easily; there are some risks. Bruns herself has never had a serious injury, though she can recall others experiencing things like ACL tears, concussions, and other general sprains.

As a professional mogul skier, Bruns gave various tips for younger athletes who may be curious about how to get into something like this. She has a lot of connections, and they gave her valuable information she may not have been able to get otherwise.

“I definitely think putting yourself out there is a really good way. I have friends who are U.S. World Cup skiers. They’ve been to the Olympics, and I have been able to talk to them as a peer about the pressures that they faced at the Olympics. They’re such a high level of competition, and that really puts into perspective that everything that happens is okay,” said Bruns.

Things happen in competition, and it’s important not to let it get to you if you make one minor mistake. If your coach is also a problem, switching teams may seem scary, but you as an athlete shouldn’t be afraid to use your freedom to move teams, she said.

It’s important to be confident in yourself, and that’s something we can all learn from Bruns’ story.