Flower Power: A season of ups and downs

I’m sitting in seat 19A on a flight to Vancouver. I am flying to Canada to compete at the Whistler Cup, one of the biggest junior competitions of the season. I hate flying because I always have to figure out how to pack all my stuff into one bag. It never matters how much I try, I will always have to pay overage. This time, the charge is $150. How do they expect me to fly with six pairs of skis? I can’t just hide four pairs in my carry-on.
    I'm assuming you — Ski Racing readers — don’t know who I am. So let me introduce myself. My name is Rose Caston, and I am from Salt Lake City, Utah.
    I ski race for Rowmark Ski Academy, and I am finishing up my freshman year. I will be writing a regular journal for Ski Racing, hoping older athletes and coaches can understand a little better what is going on in the mind of a ski racing teenage girl. And perhaps younger racers will have a better understanding of what is ahead of them.

I'M SITTING IN SEAT 19A on a flight to Vancouver. I am flying to Canada to compete at the Whistler Cup, one of the biggest junior competitions of the season. I hate flying because I always have to figure out how to pack all my stuff into one bag. It never matters how much I try, I will always have to pay overage. This time, the charge is $150. How do they expect me to fly with six pairs of skis? I can’t just hide four pairs in my carry-on.
    I'm assuming you — Ski Racing readers — don’t know who I am. So let me introduce myself. My name is Rose Caston, and I am from Salt Lake City, Utah.
    I ski race for Rowmark Ski Academy, and I am finishing up my freshman year. I will be writing a regular journal for Ski Racing, hoping older athletes and coaches can understand a little better what is going on in the mind of a ski racing teenage girl. And perhaps younger racers will have a better understanding of what is ahead of them.
    When I was a J5, my coach nicknamed me Flower Power. He called me that because I was about 4-foot-7 and mini. He took my name, Rose, and my personality — which he thought was powerful — and combined the two. To him, I was a tiny girl with attitude. This name is still important to me because he was one of the best coaches I've ever had and his voice was holy to me.
    As for this season, mine has been quite an experience. Let me recap my year so far.
    To start from the beginning, the summer of 2006 was my first year of going to summer camps. It had always been kind of hard not going to camp, because all of my competitors had been going to Europe and South America since they were 8 years old. I believe that going to Mammoth (June), Hood (July) and Colorado (November) in the summer and fall helped me a lot this season and gave me an advantage to start skiing fast early in the year.  

Topolino Shootout
    I had Italy on my mind. But going into the Topolino Shootout at Jackson Hole, I was very timid. One of my main competitors (who is on Rowmark as well) was beating me in training and I sometimes would beat her if I had a really good run. As a result, in my head I was thinking, "Don’t think you’re going to win. There are four girls here who are skiing well and we all will be close, so don’t get your hopes up."
    Sports psychologists might think those words would have a negative effect, but they actually helped me. Instead of going into the Shootout skiing normal, I knew that if I wanted to be on a plane to Italy, I would have to ski beyond the level that I was at right then. Knowing this, I stepped it up a level and tried to put the hammer down.
    My first run of GS, I came down and was stunned — I had never skied like that in my life. For some magical reason, I was moving forward and had tons of early pressure. I was fluent throughout the course and kept it going. One of those four girls who was my competition ran up to me and said, “Rose, you’re winning by two seconds!” Those words made the entire run come together and I knew that I could pull this off. From there, I went up and took two more runs and did the exact same thing.
    The next day was slalom. My teammate who is a very good skier was skiing slalom tremendously well, so I knew that I had to do the same thing that I did the day before. The first run was OK — I was pretty conservative and ended up fourth that run. The next run, I blew out of the course. After the second run, I was in tears because I thought I had lost my chance to go to Italy. As I pushed out of the gate for my last and final run, I figured I would just put everything on the line and go for it. I came down after that run and it was exactly like my GS runs. I looked at the scoreboard and not only had I won the run, but also it was the fastest girls time for the day.
    I was happy about that, but I felt that it wouldn’t be enough to earn the girls spot for Topolino. I got over it, and went inside to change. Then my teammate came up to me and said, “You got it.” We added up the points together and because I had won the last and final run, that put me in front of her by two points. My hands started shaking and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know how or why I ended up winning, but all I knew is that I was going to Italy!

On to Italy
    Italy was such an incredible experience. The flight was long and dreadful of course, but when we landed in Munich, it hit me — I was representing my country in an international race, and it was just me now. The skiing at Jackson had gotten me here, and I was left alone to try and perform to my best. For the seeding in the Topolino Children’s Games, Team USA foreran the Italian champs. I had the best overall slalom places for that, so I got to be in the first seed for slalom. The GS seeding had been determined at an NDS Colorado camp in January, where I was tops overall.
    I was confident and ready going into the races and had good starting positions. But when the slalom came, I fell a number of times. Looking at the video, it just looked like I kept getting caught inside. That was definitely a bummer and I was kind of down on myself.
    The next day was GS, my specialty. I knew that I could podium in this event if I skied well. The course was pretty technical — a steep pitch started the course into a big corridor turn, then onto the flats. After the flats, you had a lot of speed and came over a blind knoll, with some big turns on a semi-steep and then into the finish. I loved this type of course and I felt ready. When I got up to the start, my stealth wasn’t there. I had a regular DH suit (the one without the pads) and I needed something to protect my arms. I ended up rushing to get into the start and had to use my sweatshirt underneath my suit as padding. I skied the course really well, but I was as round as a hog. It was weird how the mental attitude of me not having a stealth made it so in my mind I didn’t want to come close to the gates.
    All put behind me, going to Italy gave me a taste of another culture and the racing atmosphere in Europe (the Austrians aren’t as big and scary as some think). Also, Kieffer Christianson and Ben Morse did absolutely amazing at Topolino. Kieffer came out with a first and a second, and Ben with a third and sixth. People were coming up to us asking if they could shake Kieffer’s hand and things like that. What I find wonderful about those two boys though, is that they both know that they still need to ski fast. They know that things aren’t just
going to come.

Hardware at JOs
    Going into the Junior Olympics, I was 100 percent confident and just wanted to race. In the training run, I made a huge mistake and was really surprised to hear that I won. Knowing that, I went into the race knowing that I could win and just wanted to have fun. I skied some of the best super G I had ever skied and my line was perfect. I was really happy that I won the super G because it meant that I could ski the slalom and giant slalom without any pressure of making Whistler Cup.
    The slalom course the next day was really tough. It started out on a steep pitch and you had a lot of speed going onto the flats and into a flush. The course kept turning all the way into the finish. The same girl who I was really close with at the Shootout ran right before me. We joke around and call her the “Slalom Specialist,” and it was expected that she would win. I watched my teammate go out of the course multiple times and that got me really upset … before I knew it, the start ref said, “Racer ready?” Right then, I had to collect myself mentally and get ready to ski. I made it down the entire pitch and then went too straight out of the flush and straddled the next gate. I was disappointed after I messed up because I wanted to come into JOs and try to sweep the events.
    I took this anger into the next day, which was giant slalom. I fell in love with the course the first moment I saw it. After my run, I came down and I didn’t think that I would be winning — the course was rough and I got thrown around quite a bit. But when I looked at the scoreboard, I was shocked. I was winning by more than a second. After the second run, I skied the course pretty round, but I still managed to win overall. With my results at JOs, it qualified me to represent the United States at the international Whistler race.  
    Sigh, back to reality. … The flight attendant just came onto the intercom telling the passengers to prepare for landing in Vancouver, so I must go and try and figure out where I am supposed to meet the team and find my “overweight and too heavy to be lifted” bags. Gotta love the travel. Gotta love ski racing.

Got a question for Rose Caston? E-mail info@skiracing.com with the subject line ROSE and she may answer it in a future edition of Flower Power.