It’s now or never for the NorAm super G champion.

If you want something you’ve never had before, you need to do something you’ve never done before — and that’s why reigning NorAm super G champion Abby Ghent challenged herself to do a backflip on skis this summer while training in Chile.

“I’m so good at staying in my comfort zone and not scaring myself, so this summer I worked on expanding myself a little,” she said with some degree of pride during an afternoon chat in Lake Louise ahead of the World Cup races in early December. But one slightly more experienced speed skier questioned her decision to test out the maneuver in the middle of summer training.

“I came back to Colorado and Lindsey [Vonn] was in the gym with her physio, Lindsay Winninger, and I said, ‘Look, I did a backflip’ and Winninger said, ‘Whoa, cool, that’s so sweet!’ but Lindsey Vonn was like, ‘You should be more careful, you could have gotten hurt,’” recalled Ghent. “But how are you supposed to get better at anything if you don’t ever put yourself in situations like that?”

It’s going to take something a little different for the 23-year-old lifelong skier this season, as the NorAm super G title winner in both 2014 and 2015 with guaranteed World Cup starts in the discipline did not make criteria to be renamed to the national squad after five winters with the U.S. Ski Team.

“It actually wasn’t that surprising,” she said. “When we were approaching the nomination in May, a bunch of us were starting to make other plans. Katharine Irwin was looking at colleges, and Julia Ford and I started to make plans no matter what. When I got the call, immediately Patrick [Riml] said, ‘I’m so sorry to tell you, but you didn’t make the team.’”

Knowing she hadn’t made criteria and being prepared for the bad news helped Ghent process a solution in advance of the call. “I said, ‘OK, well I think I’m just going to take that super G spot that I have and continue racing,’” she said. “It wasn’t a question in my mind: ‘I have this, I’m going to take advantage of it, and I’m going to put everything I have into it.’ And then if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But at least I’m going to give it a shot. But if I didn’t have that World Cup spot, no questions asked, I would have just gone to college.”

Skiing independently has already afforded the Colorado native new opportunities, including the chance to train with the Canadian men’s World Cup team for three weeks at Les Deux Alpes and Zermatt in July, organized through her boyfriend, Dustin Cook. “It was one of the most productive camps I’ve ever had,” Ghent said of the experience.

When warm weather plagued a Ski Club Vail camp in Mt. Bachelor, Ghent took advantage of the opportunity to master freeskiing drills over the course of two weeks.

“I needed to revamp my whole approach to how I was skiing,” Ghent explained. The Ski Club Vail alumna, whose older sister and mother both work for the program, has leaned on Vail for more than just moral support. “A huge part of the freedom is I got to work with my trainer from Ski Club Vail [John Cole, or J.C.] who knows me so well. When I was on the team it was a little muddled, so this year it was awesome to get J.C. to work with me, and he was pushing me harder than I could have pushed myself.”

“This is my last shot, so we figured it was best to put everything we could into it.”

They say it takes a village, and Ghent’s village this season is populated with a lot of familiar faces.

“We” includes not only Ghent but also her father, who is serving as her coach for the season. Brad Ghent is a former member of the U.S. Ski Team’s coaching staff who worked with the women’s Europa Cup group for four years and then the World Cup team for two years through the 1985 World Championships in Bormio, Italy. Brad is stepping back for the year as the owner of a rental car business in order to help see his youngest daughter’s dreams come to fruition.

“To have been a part of that, to see the abilities of those ladies at that time and have an opportunity to come back to try to help my daughter out now at this time is just a great opportunity,” Brad says. “I know [my wife] Karen misses me, which is good, but it’s a big sacrifice. I’ve been gone a lot from my normal occupation. Fortunately I have a really great staff, and I appreciate everything that they do because I’m gone quite a bit this year.”

Making the leap from the NorAm and Europa Cup circuits to scoring on the World Cup has proven to be a difficult task for many North Americans. The closest Ghent has come so far in six super G starts was finishing 38th last March in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, just over a half-second away from scoring, which was a major breakthrough from her previous finishes in the 40s and 50s. Two top-15 Europa Cup finishes and the sequential NorAm titles help give the 23-year-old confidence that she can crack the top 25 on the World Cup if she can make the next big step.

“She’s been a really great skier and has shown that she can go fast, but as she would say when she watches some of the World Cup ladies, they seem to have another gear,” says Brad. “We need to find that next gear for her, and actually I think we’re approaching that right now.”

With her birth year of 1992, Ghent will need to finish out the season in the top 40 on the World Cup Start List (WCSL) to make U.S. Ski Team criteria, and she’ll need to finish inside the top 30 of a World Cup race in order to do so. Though every season is different, the cut off for the top 40 WCSL in super G during the past three years has ranged from 9 to 16 points for women.

On World Cup race days, Ghent receives full coaching support from the U.S. Ski Team and inspects with the other women on the speed team. Does that still leave a role for Dad?

“I’m about 10 to 20 percent coach and 80 percent cheerleader, anyway, and maybe that’s the coach’s role as it should be,” says Brad. “But that would be my spot. I’ll be there to support her, and she’s knows that I’m there. She knows that the hard work she’s put in should pay off, and that should be enough. I’ll be satisfied with that.”

Ghent’s RallyMe crowdfunding campaign, “Road to Reality”, which ends on Dec. 29, is not the first time she’s reached out to the greater ski racing community for support, but it may very well be her last. With more maturity has come more transparency, and Ghent’s fundraising platform outlines how particular dollar levels will provide the bare necessities for her season. A donation of $100 covers one checked ski bag on a flight, $500 pays for three days of lodging and training, and $1000 supports the majority of a round-trip plane ticket to Europe. Operating on a budget of $100,000 this season, Ghent is only seeking to raise a fraction of that, or $20,000, via RallyMe.

“Finances are the biggest challenge,” she said, “raising enough money to pay for my tech and travel and all the little things like baggage fees which are now a lot higher than people anticipate, especially for speed skiers who are always traveling with so many skis.”

Keep an eye out for Ghent during her make-or-break season in these upcoming World Cup super G races:

Jan. 10: Zauchensee, Austria
Jan. 24: Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Feb. 7: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
Feb. 21: La Thuile, Italy
March 12: Lenzerheide, Switzerland