Chapter 4

School Days

Kelly continued snowboarding for fun, and at age fourteen she started being coached. When she entered the ninth grade, her school year was divided between two schools, with the snowboarding season sandwiched in the middle. Kelly attended a traditional school during the first quarter, spent the second and third quarters at a mountain school, and then returned to her traditional school in the last quarter.

During the off-season, Kelly attended Brattleboro Union High School in Brattleboro, Vermont. During snowboarding season, Kelly was a student at Mount Snow Academy (MSA) in Mount Snow, Vermont. MSA offered a full-time winter program for skiers and snowboarders in grades six through twelve. While at MSA, Kelly split her day between the classroom and the slopes.

“You take your classes and get tutored during the two middle semesters [at the mountain school]. You keep up with your course curriculum and go back to your [other] school in the spring,” explained Kelly. “It’s focused around furthering your snowboarding and pursuing your dreams and accomplishing your academics at the same time.” At that point in her life, Kelly knew she wanted to compete in snowboarding and pursue it as her career.

Attending the mountain school came with other benefits — tutoring. Kelly had a speech impediment and had taken speech classes until the sixth grade. But then it was discovered that she also had dyslexia.

Kelly’s learning problems initially were undetected partly because she attended a small elementary school where she received more attention and assistance. But her middle school classes had more students. “I was having a hard time as I went from a small school to a big school,” recalled Kelly, “which was probably magnified since I wasn’t getting as much one-on-one attention.”

Kelly had been having trouble keeping up with the rest of the class, so she was tested to find out why. “It’s never fun being identified as having some sort of learning disability. But at the same time, through figuring that out, all of a sudden … things made a lot more sense. And with tutoring and extra help, I could keep up. It wasn’t that [I’m not] intelligent; it was just the type of learning environment didn’t suit my intellect.”

The smaller setting of the mountain school was a perfect fit for Kelly’s learning style, but the larger classes in her hometown school presented more of a challenge. So her grandfather made a deal with her: He’d help financially support her while she attended the Mount Snow Academy, but she’d have to improve her grades. “Having an opportunity to get tutored and to pursue snowboarding really seemed like it would work,” said Kelly.

After having the dyslexia identified and receiving some tutoring, Kelly’s grades did improve. “As soon as I got tutored — that was the type of learning that really helped me.”

The teachers at Mount Snow put in a great deal of time to work with Kelly and bring her up to speed. “I was able to not just survive school, but I started to excel. And I think it was the one-on-one tutoring that really facilitated that.” Excelling for Kelly didn’t necessarily mean how she stacked up against the other students. For her it was the feeling of, “‘Oh, I actually understand this, and I’m actually on track with the rest of my class.’ That was excelling for me.”

With her schoolwork under control, Kelly was able to spend more time playing sports. In addition to snowboarding, she played soccer and tennis. Kelly’s transition between Brattleboro Union High School and MSA occurred during those two sport seasons. So playing those sports made it easier for Kelly to go back and forth between her two high schools and still have friends.

“It was nice,” said Kelly. “I came back and played tennis immediately, and so I was already in a little group [of friends] right when I got home. I made my friendships back very quickly through sports. If I didn’t have that, it would have been really hard to transition in and out of school.”

Kelly and her brother Tim celebrate at her graduation from Brattleboro Union High School in Brattleboro, Vermont. Kelly was seventeen.

Snowboarding defined Kelly as she went between the two schools. It was how people knew her. “I was the snowboarder. And for good or bad, it was just nice to have it to identify with.” Kelly missed out on some of the normal intricacies of high school, but she had her budding professional snowboarding career to focus on.

Snowboarding allowed Kelly to make friends who didn’t attend either high school. One friend, Damon Redd, has remained close over the years. The two met when they were twelve years old. “There were a bunch of us skiing around Mount Snow; a couple different groups met up. Little did we know we were making multiple friends for life,” said Damon. He attended the junior prom with Kelly at her high school, and apparently Kelly had skills beyond the slopes. “We were dancing fools!” recalled Damon.

Damon spent time with Kelly doing the things teenagers do. “We used to just hang out, play games — raid her parents’ restaurant for food. We became workout buddies for a while, going to the Grand Summit Hotel four to five days a week. She was doing training and conditioning for snowboarding. I just worked out to look good.”