Help Alexa get back to ski racing!

Hi! If you don't know me, my name is Alexa Kate (AK for short), and I’ve loved skiing for as long as I can remember.

My family has always been a skiing family, so as a toddler growing up in Truckee, California, they put me on skis as soon as possible. I started on the Tahoe Donner team when I was 3 years old and immediately fell in love. When I got older we moved away from Truckee, but we never stopped skiing. I joined the Palisades teams, starting with the Mighty Mites (where I later coached!) and then the SVST Development and Far West race teams.

When I was 12, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (SJIA) also known as Still’s Disease. This means my innate immune system attacks my joints and organs, causing inflammation and damage. While my systemic involvement has been relatively well controlled by my medication, unfortunately my joint involvement has not. My joint damage has progressed to end-stage arthritis/ankylosis (fusing) and contracture of multiple joints, especially in my lower body.

When I was first diagnosed, my right ankle was my only affected lower body joint. Skiing went from my favorite sport, to the only stand up sport I could participate in, as I was able to adapt my skiing to accommodate my non-articulating ankle. On land I needed a crutch to walk, but on the mountain I could ditch my crutch and fly away on skis. Ski racing was the one place I truly felt like everyone else, it was my escape from SJIA.

Two years ago I experienced a severe disease flare that led to my disability to progress significantly. The rest of my lower body joints became involved (hips and knees), and the complications from the severe inflammation led to damage and contracture. My 2022 season ended early when I no longer had the joint range of motion to continue walking and — even more heartbreaking to me — to continue skiing. Almost overnight I went from gate training every day after school to having to learn how to adapt to life from a wheelchair.

That's when I started sit ski lessons at Achieve Tahoe. I was afraid that I could never ski at the level I used to before becoming a wheelchair user, but Achieve Tahoe, my local adaptive organization showed me that I was wrong. I spent the winter 2024 season dedicating myself to learning to monoski at the level I used to stand up ski.

As I was re-learning to ski, the idea of getting back into a race course kept me going. By the end of the 2024 season, I was able to join my old team for a spring slalom camp. It was incredibly difficult, but also reignited my love for racing. I knew then that I needed to get back to racing for real.

I started my 2025 season at a camp for emerging adaptive racers, and learned a lot. I then spent my winter break training with my old team at Palisades and then with the National Ability Center's High Performance Team in Park City, UT. I competed in my first Para FIS North American race in February, and another in March, even getting my first podium, and managing my way into the top 5 women's National rankings in slalom.

Getting back into gates as a beginner again has been hard but also incredibly rewarding. I feel so lucky to be able to be doing the thing I had once thought was lost forever.

I have now set my sights on representing the US in the 2030 Winter Paralympic Games in the French Alps. It will be a long and hard road to get there, and an even more expensive one. Getting funding for sports is hard, but funding for para sports is often even harder, as the cost for an adaptive athlete is usually 10x+ the cost for their able-bodied counterpart.

I am reaching out to my community for your help in making this dream a reality. My plan is to start full-time training in the upcoming season, and I am raising funds for training, equipment, as well as travel and competition expenses. Attached is a list of my current season and next season budget. I greatly appreciate any and all support you can offer -- anything helps.

Hope to see you on the mountain soon,

-AK

@alexak8te