The Vail Valley Foundation has named Nicola Rountree-Williams of Tryon and Vail, Colo. to the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championship Dream It. Team. The Dream It. Team is an elite group of Ski and Snowboard Club Vail junior winter sports athletes who earned a position in the Rocky Mountain Division Podium Team through race and championship results in the 2013-2014 competition season. Team members consistently finished on the podium, often in multi-day races with over 100 competitors in each age group. Team members range from 12 – 20 years of age.

The goal of the Dream It. Team is to serve as youth ambassadors for the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, which are being held at Vail and Beaver Creek, Colo. on Feb. 2 – 15, 2015. Dream It. Team members will be responsible for raising awareness about the Championships in addition to writing winter and summer blogs about their training and making public appearances at athlete signing events and during the Championship’s opening and closing ceremonies.

Rountree-Williams is 12 years old and attended Tryon Elementary School.  She began skiing at age two and began racing at age seven on public NASTAR courses. She was accepted in the full-time alpine program at Ski and Snowboard Club Vail in 2013 after previously racing for the Beech Mountain, N.C. and Wintergreen, Va. ski racing teams.

Rountree-Williams races in the Rocky Mountains during the winter and resides in Tryon during the summer months. In addition to a year-round ski training regimen, She also enjoys horseback riding, hiking, swimming, tennis, mountain biking and writing.  She will be training on the glacier in Hintertux, Austria during September and will then return to Vail in October to continue her training and start the competition season with her Vail teammates.

The 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Vail and Beaver Creek will showcase over 700 athletes from more than 70 nations, including American Olympians Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso, Mikaela Shiffrin, Ted Ligety and Bode Miller. These World Championships represent the largest and most impressive collection of ski racing talent in the world, second only to the Olympics. The FIS Alpine World Ski Championships were last held in the US in 1999.

 

-article submitted
by Elizabeth Rountree