Brody Meskers

ABC Male Athlete of the Year

The ABC has selected the 2011 Male Athlete of the Year: Brody Meskers.

          Eleven-year-old Brody Meskers says he doesn’t want to be like World Champion Keith St. Onge when he grows up. He wants to be better.  It has been many years since our sport has seen such a self-motivated young skier move up so quickly in the sport.

When Brody Meskers was three years old, he watched some barefooters in a ski show in Wisconsin and told his dad he wanted to learn. By the time he was five, he was barefooting on a 20-foot line and at six, he entered his first competition.  Because of his tumble up starts, the tumble turn became his first trick–even before he learned to wave.

Six-year-old Brody competed in the Midwest Regional’s and U.S. Nationals– and he won both tournaments, edging out boys who were 7, 8 and 9 years old.  The following year, Brody learned to barefoot backwards and that opened the door to harder tricks and even more barefooting.

Brody is now a sponsored skier at the World Barefoot Center. “I like barefooting so much because there is so much to learn,” says Brody. “You can always get better and better.  Sometimes I don’t want to ski, but if I want to become the best, I have to go hard at it.”

This year, Brody focused on jumping and surface turns.   And at the tender age of 11, Brody has become a force to be reckoned with in national competition.  At the 2011 U.S. Nationals he swept all titles in Boys 2. He won slalom with 8.9 points, tricks with 2,900 points, jumping with a 22 foot jump and of course, the overall.

The sky seems to be the limit for the young gun from Chetek, Wisconsin.  Brody represents the future of our sport… and thankfully, the future could not be brighter.