Castilleja senior ready for international ski debut | News

Castilleja senior Madison Ringham took time to reflect on how far she has come since joining the junior ski team at Kirkwood Mountain Resort as a sixth grader.

“I was thinking a lot as a senior since my debut,” Ringham said in a recent phone interview. “At that time, I had no idea that I would be competing at this level. I thought my competitive career would end when I got to high school.”

Not only has his career flourished, but Ringham is looking internationally. On Thursday, January 20, 2022, she will travel to Kappl-Paznaun, Austria, for the Junior Freeride World Championships, which begin on January 24.

Freeride skiing includes off-piste skiing, usually in areas not normally designed for public use. In other words, it’s off the beaten track and it’s up to each skier to figure things out for themselves and set a course that will score points with the judges.

While Ringham is based in Kirkwood, she skis competitively throughout the Tahoe region and Alaska, among other places.

She qualified for the World Junior Championships after winning the Kirkwood Regional and finishing second in three other regionals.

“Selection is normally based on your ranking the previous season at Tahoe and in national competitions,” Ringham said. “With COVID, we were only allowed to compete in regionals, so they took the best from each regional. I was disappointed there was no national competition.”

The COVID-19 situation has been both a blessing in disguise and a frustrating experience for Ringham.

When the schools came online in March 2020, Ringham was given the chance to move her base to Kirkwood, from where she had spent almost every snowy weekend since birth.

“My parents had it set up where one skied in the morning and the other in the afternoon, each taking turns watching me,” Ringham said. “Finally, when I was two, they put me on skis so we could be together. It also happened with my younger brother (Ryan Ringham, a sophomore at Valley Christian, where he plays football and track court).”

As of March 2020, Ringham was a two-year veteran of competing on the Kirkwood Freeride team (ages 15-18) after spending several years with the junior team learning freeride skills.

“When I was offered a spot on the freeride team, I jumped at the chance,” Ringham said. “As there weren’t many girls, we ended up skiing with the boys and they pushed us to improve.”

By the time she was ready for competition, Ringham knew she had improved a lot but still had no idea where she belonged.

“I finished fourth in my first competition and I was delighted with it,” she said. “The next day I was in another race and I was like ‘what’s going on?’ I didn’t feel like I knew where I was going.”

She won this competition.

Ringham joined Castileja’s cross-country team as a rookie in the fall of 2018, thinking it would help him build leg strength. Building friendships was an added bonus.

“They pushed with me in all the different workouts,” she said. “It was like we were running for each other and depending on each other. Skiing is not like cross-country skiing. Even though we push each other, it’s still an individual sport. “

In three years with her teammates, Castilleja has won two Central Coast Section Division V titles and twice placed in the top five at the state meet.

This spring, Ringham will return to athletics with the 4×400 meters relay team.

Being able to spend the entire winter of 2020-21 in Kirkwood has come in handy. She had commuted between the Bay Area and Kirkwood every weekend during the winters, occasionally getting stuck in traffic that added hours to what is normally a 3-4 hour drive.

Just as Ringham was about to start his senior year of high school, the Caldor Fire, which eventually consumed more than 221,000 acres near South Lake Tahoe, broke out. Two weeks later he reached Kirkwood.

“I was really scared of what happened,” she said. “I grew up in Kirkwood and I didn’t know if we were going to lose our house or not. The firefighters did a great job. I got to watch the webcams and see them going up the car lifts. I had friends there who could see him approaching.”

And then she saw the effects firsthand.

“It came close but everything remained intact.” she said. “You can see the burn scars even with the snow. We are mostly all grateful.”

There was a lot of snow.

“I was living in Kirkwood during record snowfall and just living, skiing every day,” Ringham said. “I started to learn new tricks.”

Which helped her qualify for the World Junior Championships, where unlike her previous competitions, she won’t be able to complete a practice run before competing.

“The first time I ski will be my competitive race,” she said. “In preparation for this change, I visually inspected the lines at Kirkwood, Emigrant Lake and even last weekend when I went to the Sugar Bowl.

“The main thing I look for are markers that tell me where to go, like snow mounds or trees, and I try to memorize my path from visual inspection alone. It’s much more difficult to inspect that way and adds a bit of nerve to the competition.”

Ringham launched a GoFundMe account to help him make the trip.