Squeezing in a few Snowbird, UT powder runs with her dad David Samuels between a busy season of coaching. Lauren spent two winters as an FIS coach with Team Gilboa in 2019 and Rowmark Ski Academy in 2020. Photo: David Samuels “I REMEMBER THINKING, ‘WOW, THERE ARE OTHER BLACK PEOPLE WHO SKI. WHY DO PEOPLE THINK WE DON’T SKI?’”—LAUREN SAMUELS Getting cut from the U.S. Team after just one year was one of the few times Lauren’s parents have seen her cry. “I felt like there was unfinished business,” Lauren says. “I didn’t achieve everything I wanted to do or set out to do, but I knew this wasn’t the end. I had watched numerous athletes succeed without the support of the U.S. Ski Team, so I didn’t let it stop me from continuing on my journey.” Lauren went on to race in college. As a Division I ski racer at the University of Utah and captain of a team that won the NCAA National Championships her senior year, other coach-ing and athletic department staff would sometimes assume she played a different sport. “People would always think I played softball or ran track,” Lauren says. “When I’d tell them I was a skier, they’d always look a little surprised.” She was used to those types of comments by then. They impacted her, bit by bit, but she always chose to rise above. She took premed courses, battled and overcame injuries, and gradu-ated college in 2017 with bright plans for her future. Today, Lauren is in graduate school at the University of Oregon, where she’s studying sports product management. She hopes to get a job working for an outdoor or ski-industry brand where she can begin unraveling the issue that’s loomed over her entire life. WHEN GEORGE FLOYD was killed in her hometown of Minneapolis in late May 2020, Lauren stepped into the streets, part of one beating heart in the global movement for change. That summer, she rode her mountain bike 84.6 miles—to sig-nify of the 8 minutes and 46 seconds in which Floyd was pinned to the ground by police officer Derek Chauvin—over the course of 10 days to raise funds for a friend’s campaign benefiting a local kids’ bicycling program. “My dad’s been pulled over by the police while riding his bike on our own street,” Lauren says. “Being active and being outside is healing for me, but there was a period that summer where I was scared to leave my house.” Lauren had to find ways to rediscover comfort in the out-doors. “There have always been moments where I’m scared in the outdoors because of what I look like or what my dad and family look like,” she says. “But for all of these people who came before me and blazed this trail, I owe it to them to continue to share this space.” Lauren has come to terms with the fact that her identity is no longer linked to ski racing. She’s still a skier, of course, and she spent several seasons working as a race coach at Team Gilboa and Rowmark Academy, but she’s got other priorities now. She’s on the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging committee for the Lundquist College of Business at the Uni-versity of Oregon and she’s in a BIPOC student group that organizes events meant to foster community on campus. Last year, Lauren was asked to join the U.S. Ski and Snow-board Association’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee, which was formed in 2017. The committee’s initial efforts were focused on recruiting and retaining more women in coaching positions. “Then the events of 2020 happened, and we immediately said, ‘There’s another critically serious issue here: There are many groups in our country who are not represented in our sports,’” says Ellen Adams, club develop-ment manager for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association and chair of the DEI committee. “We knew we needed to take a look at our own organization. Are we being as inclusive as we can be? How can we be more diverse?” Lauren Samuels 077
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 2: Page 77
