As Jessie Duda fought through traumatic brain injuries caused by a post-prom car crash, doctors told the Fayette County native she may never be able to ski again.

But about 2½ years later, Duda will travel to Kazakhstan to compete against athletes ages 14 to 19 from across the world in mogul skiing.

For Duda, representing the United States in the Junior World Championships is the outcome of a lifetime of training — literally. Duda, 19, learned to ski when she was just 1 year old.

Learning the slopes

Her father, Mark Duda, is an avid skier and coach for the Pa. Freestyle Ski Association, a ski team based out of Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Somerset County. After teaching his wife and son to ski, it was a given Mark Duda would make the hourlong drive from the family’s Brownsville home to show 13-month-old Jessie the ropes.

“She grew up walking and skiing at the same time,” Mark Duda said.

Jessie Duda fell in love with the sport — especially the competition.

“When I’m just skiing for fun, it’s just laughing and not really too serious,” Duda said. “But on competition day, I’m so focused, it’s like no one can even talk to me sometimes because I’m just totally focused on my run.

“I block everything out. I can’t hear anyone, and I just focus on what I need to do.”

Duda specializes in moguls — a form of freestyle skiing that involves carving between mounds of snow scattered across the 200-meter slope. Advanced moguls skiers propel themselves off the mounds, flipping through the air.

Duda was recruited in middle school to train on scholarship at Killington Mountain School, a high school ski academy in Vermont. Now, she trains under former Olympic skiers, competing for Utah-based team Wasatch Freestyle while pursuing a degree from nearby Westminster University.

Overcoming hurdles

Skiing through stomach pains, nausea and low energy caused by norovirus, Duda secured a spot on the U.S. roster for the Junior World Championships. She and her 11 teammates — six male and five female — will travel to Kazakhstan on New Year’s Day.

But norovirus was not the only hurdle Duda faced in her 18-year journey to compete on the global stage. She was sidelined for more than six months after a car crash left her with multiple skull and brain injuries.

An acquaintance was driving Duda and a handful of her friends along a steep, windy road to a prom afterparty in May 2022 when the side of the vehicle rammed a telephone pole, sending the car and its passengers 50 feet off the street.

One passenger was left with a broken wrist, two others with minor concussions. Duda got the worst of it. The impact riddled her skull with fractures and resulted in a brain bleed.

Duda’s friends pulled her profusely bleeding body from the vehicle. Most of her memory from that night is wiped clean.

“She was calling me and my wife,” Mark Duda said, “and literally every 20 seconds, her brain would restart and she would repeat herself — like she was just calling again.”

An ambulance drove Duda to Rutland Regional Medical Center, a half hour from the crash site. She was later taken via helicopter to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire for advanced trauma treatment.

Recovery road

Duda recovered from the brain bleed in just two days. Her parents picked her up and drove her back to Brownsville, and she received additional treatment from UPMC doctors in Pittsburgh.

Vestibular therapy improved her balance and reduced dizziness, and twice-a-week speech therapy throughout the summer restored her ability to remember information. An exertion doctor retaught her how to exercise, helping her repair the disconnect between the damaged right side of her brain and movements done by the right half of her body.

As her teammates trained on the slopes the next school year, Duda was stuck conditioning on the stationary bike or practicing hand-eye coordination with a bouncy ball.

At first, Duda’s outcomes looked grim.

“The doctors were actually unsure I was going to be able to go into a competitive sport again, and they basically said it was up to me if I wanted to do it,” she said. “I had to relearn how to memorize things, relearn how to balance, and it was completely relearning how to do everything it felt like.”

Eight months later, Duda was back out on the slopes perfecting her craft.

Duda receives steroid shots for hair loss caused by the crash, and she still struggles with occasional bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder — particularly when riding in a car or passing the scene of a car crash.

Competing internationally

But Duda’s doctors assure her she has made a complete physical recovery.

“I would definitely say it makes (Junior World Championships) more meaningful, especially because no one else there had to do what I had to do to get there,” Duda said, reflecting on the crash.

“After being hurt for so long, when you don’t ski for so long, it really shows you how much you’re missing out on. It made me like skiing a lot more — and grateful for it.”

Duda aims to place in the top three at Junior World Championships, which would position her to compete in moguls at U.S. World Cup tournaments — a pivotal step in pursuing the Olympic games.

“It’s definitely going to be one of the hardest competitions I’ve been in,” she said. “It’s going to be the top six best people from each country under 19, so it’s going to be the best of the best of each country competing against each other.”

Duda estimates she will compete against about 40 athletes from at least 10 different countries from Jan. 7 to 9. Her parents are eager to cheer her on via livestream.

As Mark Duda watched his daughter teach local children how to ski moguls at Seven Springs just two days before her flight to Kazakhstan, he could not hold back his pride in his daughter’s accomplishments.

“I don’t have words,” he said. “It’s just unbelievable.”

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