I was an average high school student who loved running and skiing, but had no especially strong sense of my future after graduation. With limited resources, I considered the military until a former high school teammate encouraged me to come to Orange County Community College and join him on the cross-country team. I found success with the team, as well as academic encouragement from my advisor who helped me assess and find my interests in foreign languages and history, to develop the focus and skills that led to becoming the first college graduate in my family.  I received an athletic scholarship for running that led to an undergraduate degree and eventually two graduate degrees. In my second year of teaching high school French (1970), I was drafted into the U.S. Army. Following Basic Training, my assignment to the Defense Language Institute as a language instructor was cancelled and I was sent instead to the U.S. Army Modern Winter Biathlon Training Center in Alaska.  They had discovered my running and skiing background. Biathlon is the modern Winter Olympic sport that combines cross-country skiing with rifle marksmanship that had originated in Scandinavia. This army assignment was responsible for the exciting international sports competitive experience that included representing the U.S. in four World Championships, including one in the former Soviet Union. Following three years of living in Europe, studying language in France, and sport coaching in Norway, I became the coach for the U.S. Biathlon Team and the 1980 Olympic Biathlon team. I was later recruited back to the military and served a 26-year career as the U.S. Armed Forces Biathlon team coach and administrator and was awarded the army’s highest non-combat award for writing the U.S. Army manuals for training and coaching biathlon. During that career I traveled the world for competitive events, including the United States, Europe, and Asia, and from the Artic north at Inuvik, Canada to Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina. I was inducted into the New York Ski Racing Association and the U.S. Biathlon Hall of Fame. I have served on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Biathlon Association since 1984. One of the most important accomplishments for which I am proud was introducing women to the sport in 1980 and seeing the U.S. Women’s Biathlon team win medals at the first Woman’s World Championships in 1984. After retirement from teaching and the military I published my second book about biathlon in August 2019. The first, Biathlon, published in 1979 was about the sport while the second, Unique and Unknown, the Story of Biathlon in the United States is a more complete history. I was awarded the Ullr Prize by the International Ski History Association in March 2020 with the presentation of that award to be made at Sun Valley, Idaho in December 2020. I am frequently reminded how important those two years as a student at SUNY Orange prepared me with the confidence, skills, and memories for a lifetime. I developed life-long friendships with a few classmates and teammates whom I often share the memories we made together during the two years we learned and grew as students.