DRAPER — Back at the 2002 Winter Olympics, Lacy Schnoor couldn't get her hands on tickets to go watch the sport she was learning and falling in love with.
"I went to archery or long-distance something," the Draper resident said with a laugh while trying to remember what she saw.
No offense to the cross-country biathlon athletes who competed at Soldier Hollow (with guns actually, not bows and arrows), but Schnoor might have liked their event better if they had to shoot at their targets while doing some triple flips and 360s up 30 feet in the air.
That type of winter sport is more her thing — well, minus the shooting part.
And though Schnoor couldn't attend the aerial freestyle ski jumping competition when it was on the world stage in Park City three years ago, she certainly could if the Games were held there now. Her connections have improved drastically now that she's a national champion in the sport.
Competing in her first full year with the U.S. freestyle team and only a few years after attempting her first jump — a scary 24-inch-high plunge into a pool — the Alta High alum won the gold medal at the national championships held at Utah Olympic Park two weeks ago.
"I think I kind of surprised a lot of people," she said. "I was definitely surprised — and excited."
Surprising, in part, because Schnoor is one of the youngest jumpers on the team. She's only 19 years old. She also really hasn't had a chance to prove herself — or practice, for that matter — as much as she'd like because of an injury.
While in Canada for one of her first competitions two years ago, Schnoor didn't quite get enough speed on her descent. Her landing was short, resulting in torn knee ligaments, surgery and time away from her sport for nearly two years.
Schnoor didn't have any such problems at the U.S. finals, where she took first place by nailing a full-full (two back flips with a twisting 360 in each flip) and a lay-full (a back flip and then a 360 back flip). The only bad part about the victory was that Schnoor's teammate, Emily Cook, was initially announced as the champ. But a scoring discrepancy was discovered, and Schnoor was later given the gold she'd unknowingly won.
Schnoor handled the situation gracefully, admitting that it was hard to see them take a gold away from her friend. But she's still ecstatic to have won, in part because she earned some money and because she moved up to the B team. That means Schnoor's flights will be paid for, she'll receive food money and extra funding. She'll need to get good results in World Cup competitions to jump up into the even-higher A team.
She hopes to soar into that squad in time for the 2006 Winter Games in Italy.
"That's definitely my goal — to go to the Olympics," she said. "If not next year, I still have 2010 that I'm going to try for."
A former gymnast and Alta High cheerleader, Schnoor currently lives with her parents by South Mountain. Along with her ski jumping — not the long stuff, she's not that big of a daredevil, she admits — Schnoor is also trying to get a business degree. But going to college is tough, because she lives in Park City in the summer and competes in the winter. She said the team trains from May through October, mostly at the UOP pool where they have to pass off certain jumps before they can attempt it on the snowy hill.
Schnoor first became familiar with the sport during a summer recruiting program two years before the Olympics. She wasn't a big skier, but her gymnastics background gave her an edge. Her first jump was only two feet high, but it seemed like it was off a cliff at the time.
"I was pretty scared jumping into a pool of water," she said. "I tried it and just kind of stuck with it."
By the end of Day 1, she was flipping on skis in both directions, back and front. The then-15-year-old was "pretty excited" about it all, enough so that she eventually quit cheerleading at Alta to devote her time to aerials. A good choice, she admits, seeing as she qualified for the national team soon after during her junior year.
Schnoor's aerial repertoire has come quite a way since the first little leap of faith. Now she hopes to work up to a full-double-full, which is a back flip with a 360 and a second back flip with a 720 twist. She says that's the jump that's been winning World Cups for women. Though the U.S. men are competitive against the world, the women didn't have the strongest season in 2004-05 because of injuries and inexperience.
Personally, Schnoor had a couple of top-10 finishes while competing internationally in the U.S., Canada, China and Italy. She believes next season will be much more successful for her and the team as they increase their jumps' difficulty levels.
But, she insists she jumps "for fun" without worrying about results. There's just nothing like speeding down the slope, soaring in the sky and then twisting, tilting and tumbling through the thin air. It's quite the rush, she said, to get "so high off the ground. It feels great when you land a perfect jump and ski away."
It feels even better, she now knows, when you ski away as the national champion.
E-mail: jody@desnews.com