The start of Spring term has brought one of the most interesting members of the Class of 2015 back to campus. Hannah Kearney '15 is just like most freshmen at the College, impressively motivated, worrying about the transition to college-level work and working to find a subject that would make for an interesting major. However, there are a few significant differences between her story and the stories of most other freshmen.
Kearney is 26 years old, living at home across the Connecticut River in Norwich, Vt. She is also an Olympic gold medalist, having won the women's moguls competition at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. Earlier this year, Kearney set an all-discipline record for collecting 16 consecutive FIS World Cup victories, a streak that began in the beginning of 2011. Kearney joins a long list of members of the Dartmouth community who have been avid participants in winter sports and is considered one of the best competitors in her sport ever.
"[Having an Olympic gold medalist on campus] is a really cool thing for the community," Sophia Schwartz '13, one of Kearney's good friends, said. "It shows the balance between sports and academics that the school strives for."
Despite growing up nearby and having attended Hanover High School, applying to Dartmouth last year was not always Kearney's plan, she said.
"It sounds weird, but applying to Dartmouth was spontaneous," she said.
For Kearney, who started skiing professionally at age 17, it was natural to skip college after high school and to continue skiing internationally.
"After I graduated from high school, it was skiing, skiing, skiing," Kearney said. "You really don't need school in the skiing world I come from."
After having achieved such widespread and consistent success in her sport, Kearney began to reconsider her decision not to pursue a college degree. Watching her brother Denny Kearney, a varsity hockey player at Yale University, as he enjoyed his college experience helped convince Kearney to revisit the possibility of pursuing higher education.
"Having been in it for that long and having achieved the ultimate goal [of an Olympic gold medal] that I had set for myself, I decided to re-evaluate," Kearney said.
In a meeting with the Admissions Office early last year, Kearney discussed what it would take for a 24-year-old to apply to college and how she could balance her academic work while skiing at a World Cup level. Dartmouth seemed to be the perfect match, allowing her to continue both pursuits at the highest level.
One of the key factors for Kearney was the flexibility of the D-Plan, which allows her to take extra off-terms during the school year to accommodate the ski season. Kearney is planning to be on campus only during Spring terms until she retires from skiing, at which time she will be able to work on her studies full-time.
"I'm not ready to retire from skiing, so I was going to continue to ski, and it just so happens that Spring term starts the day after our last competition of the year almost every single year, so the schedule was ideal," Kearney said.
Staying close to home was also important for Kearney because it allowed her to continue her training with the fewest additional disruptions.
"I'm still living in the exact same house, training in the exact same way, but I can go to school at the same time at Dartmouth," she said.
Finally, the academic prestige of a Dartmouth education sealed the deal for Kearney, who was so enthusiastic about the school that she applied and was accepted early decision last fall.
One of the most difficult aspects for Kearney has been the transition back to academic life after seven years away from school. Kearney acknowledged that she underestimated the challenge studying again would pose. Intimidated by taking her first classes last spring before any other members of the Class of 2015 arrived on campus, being significantly older than most other students and having been out of school for so long, Kearney described her initial frustration when her first Dartmouth term did not go as smoothly as she had hoped.
"I was already someone who had stressed myself out during high school," Kearney said. "So I expected a lot more out of myself than I was able to produce, which was really discouraging."
Over the course of the term, Kearney, like most incoming freshmen, began to learn how to adjust to a college workload and ended up having a successful first term taking economics, history and women and gender studies classes. Like the majority of the Class of 2015, Kearney does not have her sights set on a specific major yet and is taking a variety of classes to explore different areas of interest.
"Even though I'm 26 years old, I'm in the same position or even behind some 18-year-olds as far as knowing what I want to do," she said.
Kearney's first experiences with freestyle skiing were at the Dartmouth Skiway, where she and her mom enrolled in the Ford Sayre program, which offered after-school lessons each week. At nine years old, Kearney competed for the first time at Waterville Valley and discovered that freestyle skiing was a natural fit.
"When I first learned how to ski, I was just drawn to the moguls," Kearney said. "It was just fun for me. It was like another challenge."
The Northeast is also notorious for having icy slopes a factor that Kearney said has made her a better overall skier.
"I think the ice contributed to being a good mogul skier because it's a lot more technical," she said.
At just 17 years old, Kearney skied her first races on the World Cup circuit and described the opportunity to travel the world as "eye opening." Traveling with a group of older fellow athletes and coaches exposed her to a variety of new ideas and personalities, she said.
After graduating high school, Kearney was faced with a tough decision to continue skiing or to attend college, a nearly mutually exclusive decision forced by the lack of collegiate freestyle skiing.
"It is unfortunate that there is no NCAA [freestyle division] because then you have to make a choice," Kearney said. "You can't do both because the time it takes to study and go to school would be a sacrifice away from your training and you're never going to make it at that rate."
Choosing to continue skiing, Kearney qualified for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy as one of the gold medal favorites. The competition turned out to be a disappointment, as she failed to make it out of the qualifying round. The frustration led Kearney to refocus her efforts and improve her training for the 2010 games in Vancouver, Canada.
"There's nothing quite like negative motivation," Kearney said. "That feeling of failure motivated me to train harder."
Four years later, Kearney again qualified for the Olympics as one of the favorites but took a new approach to the competition. During her first Olympic experience, Kearney had focused on blocking out all of the factors that made the Olympics unique and could serve as distractions.
"I just tried to think about it as another ski competition," she said. "I didn't acknowledge that I was representing the U.S., didn't acknowledge that it was the Olympics, didn't acknowledge that my parents were there and that it was their first time in Europe."
This strategy of blocking everything out stressed Kearney's nerves to the point that she "felt physical symptoms of illness the entire time I was there."
The second time, however, Kearney took the opposite approach, embracing all of the unique aspects of the Olympic Games and enjoying the spotlight. She packed only red, white and blue clothing and walked in the opening ceremonies, which helped her appreciate the organic reason why the Olympics are amazing, Kearney said.
Taking this new approach proved to be significantly more relaxing for Kearney as she went on to capture the gold medal in women's moguls, winning the first gold medal of the Games for the U.S. and defeating Canada's Jennifer Heil on her final run for the title.
When she first crossed the finish line, Kearney recalls not immediately recognizing her accomplishment.
"I was just satisfied," she said. "I skied the run I had been training for my entire life, no mistakes. It felt like redemption."
It wasn't until the medal ceremony the next day that the reality of her accomplishment began to set in.
"That was the Olympic moment for me the national anthem and the medal around your neck," Kearney said.
On her way home, after a weather-delayed series of flights that ended with her plane being rerouted to Burlington, Vt., Kearney woke up on the morning of Feb. 24, her 24th birthday, and began a whirlwind day that involved a brief stop at home and a triumphant parade through Hanover and Norwich.
"Somehow I had affected other people's lives enough that they were willing to get out of school and work to celebrate my accomplishment, and that's when I realized that the Olympics are fantastic," Kearney said. "I can't think of anything else that does that."
In the season after the Olympics, Kearney had her best year yet on the World Cup circuit, winning the mogul and overall titles. In 2012, Kearney managed to improve even more, compiling an unprecedented 16-race win streak an all-time international record in freestyle and downhill skiing and again winning both the overall and mogul titles.
For Kearney, Dartmouth is a bonus that allows her to step back from skiing and reset.
"It makes me really appreciate being able to focus on the physical assets of my sport in the summer when I can, and because I realize how much time I have to focus on school when I'm in it, the physical part takes a backseat, which is actually a good thing," she said.
Kearney said she is finally enjoying the Dartmouth experience and seeing its additional value.
"This term, I'm starting to see how all my classes relate, and I'm starting to see how they're going to make me a better person, a more well-rounded, educated person, which is good for the world and good for myself," she said. "I'm just appreciating the experience now, whereas the stress last spring [made me] not appreciate it at all."
Situated in the prime of her career, Kearney will continue to write herself into the record books and become the newest part of one of Dartmouth's most treasured traditions.
