Kaia Moritz/Courtesy photo
Kjersti Moritz has gone through some dark days over the past 10 months, but her fire hasn’t gone out.
A week after finish as the best American – ahead of athletes with World Cup starts to their name – and fourth overall in Stratton Mountain’s NorAm Cup slalom, the soon-to-be 19-year-old tore her left ACL and meniscus during the super -G at Burke Mountain in January. .8.
His rookie season on the U.S. Ski Team’s D team was over, and before it even started, so was his final football campaign at Vail Mountain School. Moritz spent the long winter and spring wondering where his identity was truly rooted.
“Yeah. A ton,” she said. “Because I feel like my whole identity is just being an athlete, (and) I was just a normal girl back then. school, so it was quite difficult. But I tried (last year) to just enjoy being a normal high school girl, hanging out with my friends and seeing a different side of it.
She spent seven weeks on crutches and watched from the bench as her two sisters, Solveig and Liv, guided the Gore Rangers to a 13-2 record.
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“Especially for her, standing on the sidelines and watching is especially hard,” said Liv, currently a freshman. D-Team athlete and star football player for DU.
“It was pretty tough seeing her injury earlier this year, but she worked extremely hard.”
Sitting at Copper Station last Saturday, on Moritz’s first day at the U.S. Ski Team’s multi-week preseason camp, the recent VMS graduate can now say with confidence that the word “athlete” defines what she does, not who she is.
“I just want to get back on my skis, feel confident again and be in a place where I can continue to build – get faster – but I also want to try to enjoy it a little more,” Moritz said.
“Live in the moment and have fun with what I do.”
Skiing, football and glimmers of hope
The start of summer saw Moritz, who will take a year off before heading to Middlebury next fall – to ski and play football – gradually return to strength training, jumping and running. She spent June and half of July in Park City with Team D, but stayed behind while they flew to New Zealand’s annual snow camp in August. In September, Moritz returned to Utah for another three-week block with her American teammates. In between, she would travel to Denver as often as possible to watch her twin sister lead the Pioneers on the field.
“I feel like our relationship has gotten stronger through this whole process,” said Liv, who believes that being “forced to take on different schedules and challenges” made the sisters the cheerleader. each other’s number 1 girl instead of “always competing with each other”. »
“I know she has been extremely supportive and enthusiastic about me and my football season, and I am very happy that her recovery is paying off.”
A few days before arriving at Copper Mountain last weekend, his mother posted a video of Kjersti performing his first turns after injury …directly on the slope of Vail where she started at 3 years old.
“It was really strange to be back on the snow. It was kind of like I was sliding and learning how to stop and turn my skis again,” Moritz said of the 90-minute session.
“It seemed a little foreign at first, obviously, but then it quickly became normal again.”
Since then, she’s been training on snow for five days, with a November 18 workout being her first day spent “carving a ton.” Moritz said starting from scratch offered the opportunity to refine some technical components.
“It’s kind of fun because I kind of have to relearn how to ski, to be able to change my movement patterns from what they were before,” she said.
“You have to put pressure on the ski at the top of your turn and at the beginning, I had a bit of a hitch in my turn. It wasn’t smooth; so that’s what I was trying to work on.
Moritz’s status in injury rehabilitation has given her a unique appreciation for what Foreste Peterson offers in her roles as both strength and on-snow coach of the U.S. Ski Team.
“I think it’s really helpful because she can see how we perform on and off the slope,” Moritz said of Peterson’s talent for translating ski-specific movement patterns into the gym. towards the track.
Moritz is not putting pressure on himself with a strict return date, but thinks it will be mid-December at the earliest.
“It’s more when I feel good and confident enough when I’m working out,” she said.
Her main goal is simply to “feel good on skis again”, but she would like to be a constant threat for the podium on the NorAm circuit, the competition calendar existing just below World Cup level. Another goal is to emulate Liv’s dual-sport approach next year.
“I think skiing helps my soccer and soccer helps my skiing,” Kjersti said.
“The agility and quickness that comes from football and the fitness – I think that helps with skiing. And the strength you get from skiing and the confidence you get when you go down a slope really fast – I think that translates to an aggressive attitude on the terrain.
The prospect of missing his first football season was one of the reasons Moritz opted for a gap year. Since her accident occurred in January, she has also received a discretionary injury spot on the 2024-25 D team.
“So I’m kind of using this year to come back,” she said.
She was excited to see her sister, Liv, on the D-Team last spring and enjoys the camaraderie with Kaitlin Keane as well as Allie and Emma Resnick, other former Gore Rangers comrades currently on the team. American skiing.
“I’m pretty close to them. We just spend a lot of time together; we’re together all summer,” she said. “They’re kind of like family.”
Lately, injuries have been a frequent topic of conversation within the group. Back-to-back injuries kept Emma Resnick out of competition for two full seasons, while Keane spent part of this offseason with a knee brace on one leg and a boot on the other.
“We were all injured around the same time. (We) help each other by just saying, “Hey, let’s look at the positives.” That’s time you’ve forced yourself to not ski, but what can you do with that time? » Resnick said.
“I know (Kjersti) also saw this in a way as a time, a blessing, to learn more about yourself beyond the sport and accomplish things that you wouldn’t necessarily have time for .”
Moritz’s advice to other athletes dealing with injury is to resist the temptation to dwell on the past.
“Focus on how you can improve every day and just get back to where you want to be,” she said.
“And just take advantage of the time you have, because you don’t have it often.”
Reflecting on the personal impact of his injury and rehabilitation process, Moritz said going through difficult times has sharpened his vision to see what truly deserves his attention: the here and now.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future and the past has already happened,” she said.
“When you focus on the present, I would say it makes me feel like I have some sort of purpose.”
