Estella Hassrick began ski jumping at 8 years old. More than a decade later, she’s waiting to see if she’ll get to compete at next month’s Winter Olympics.
She told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that it’s a dream she has been nurturing since she was 10 years old, after she made her first 25-meter ski jump at a camp in New York.
“I felt my first taste of flying,” the 19-year-old Hassrick recalled. “I was like, wow, this is really cool. Maybe I would want to do more of this. Maybe I can try to make it to the next level.”
A Madison native, Hassrick was named a member of the U.S. Ski Jumping Team last year. She’s competed for months to earn scores high enough to hopefully qualify for a spot on the U.S. Olympic Ski Jumping Team, which will compete in Italy in February. The qualification period ends Jan. 18…