Yes, it happened

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: March 3, 2016

Yes, it happened

West Bend skier in disbelief over state title

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

Daily News

KEWASKUM — Sarah Devenport knows what she accomplished Feb. 15 was special.

It’s one reason she’s still in disbelief she did it.

“It doesn’t feel real,” said the West Bend West junior and member of the West Bend co-op ski team.

Possibly another reason she’s in disbelief is because it has never happened before.

Devenport won the giant slalom race at the Wisconsin Interscholastic Alpine Racing Association Ski and Snowboard Championship on Mount La Crosse in La Crosse, finishing the course in 32.72 seconds, 0.18 seconds ahead of Arrowhead’s Teagan Hipp, who went on to win the overall state title.

Devenport is West Bend’s first high school state skiing champion, according to her coach and father, Brad Devenport.

“It really hasn’t (sunk in) yet,” Sarah said. “I know how awesome of an accomplishment it is.”

It’s something Brad never accomplished when he skied for West Bend in the mid-1980s.

“I couldn’t be happier for her,” Brad said. “I knew she could do it. She was sixth last year and she’s gotten better. It was really neat to see.”

There is another theory as to why Sarah can’t believe what she did. Her confidence was sketchy. Plus, the weekend played mind games with her.

She arrived at state Feb. 12 for training runs and was happy with how they went, which was a relief. In the week leading up to the competition, her training runs, she thought, were inconsistent. Some were good, others not so much.

“I’m not a consistent ski racer,” Sarah said. “Some days are better than others. I’ll have nights of practice where I’m skiing well or I’m not. It’s not like cross-country when you have 15 minutes to show what you have. You have 45 seconds. One mistake and it’s over.

“It’s hard to have confidence in a sport like that.”

But that’s also the thrill she gets from the sport.

“It’s such a mind game,” Sarah said. “It’s addicting.”

She may be hard on herself, but that’s a sign of a competitor.

Sarah has been beaten only once in giant slalom in the last two years. That was at state last year when she took sixth.

Also, skiers only get one run, unlike during the regular season where they get two runs.

Talk about pressure. She admitted she barely slept the night before the competition. And it didn’t get better after her runs in slalom and Super G. She was 12th in the slalom and 11th on Super G.

She thought she was confident heading into giant slalom.

“Given the way the first two went, I still had doubts,” Sarah said. “The top five medal, so my goal was to medal in the GS. I started thinking too much about the competition.”

For giant slalom, Sarah was the 12th of 132 racers to compete.

“Everything about the run was different,” she said. “My focus was on a different level. During the run, I kept telling myself, ‘That this was it.’ It felt good.”

Then the agonizing wait.

“Then I had to wait an hour for the racers to go,” Sarah said. “That was the most nerve-wracking part of the day.”

“I’ve never felt that on the edge,” she added. “There were a few racers that I had beaten before. I couldn’t even watch them go down.”

The only thing she was comfortable with was Hipp had already competed.

When the 132nd skier crossed the finish line, Sarah learned she was a state champion.

“It was pretty surreal,” she said of the moment she realized she was a state champion. “I couldn’t believe everything I had worked for had paid off.”

With all the mind games and wavering confidence, her father never doubted her.

“She’s worked very hard for this,” Brad said. “She’s been ski racing since she was 8 years old. The amount of work she’s put into it ... not only does she practice three nights a week, but she’s on the snow six days a week. There’s a lot that goes into it.”

His only nerves were typical, especially in ski racing, “You just never know.”

Brad grew up skiing and couldn’t wait to pass it onto his kids.

“I’ve always had a great passion for the sport and I love the mountains,” Brad said.

But it wasn’t a natural thing for Sarah.

“That’s what made me kind of like it,” she said, adding she was intrigued by the sport’s challenges.

Winning a state championship on giant slalom and finishing fifth overall wasn’t a fluke — Brad said Sarah spent several hours a week on the slopes wherever the snow was. She normally trains at Sunburst, but will venture throughout the state to find snow to ski. Beginning Friday is the Eastern High School National Championship competition in New Hampshire and Sarah was selected to compete for Team Wisconsin.

“I thought about (winning state) so much growing up,” Sarah said. “Now that it happened, I don’t know if it happened.”