Hear Her Sports

Beth Rodden is one of the best female rock climbers of all time, and a globally recognized ambassador for the outdoor community. She has achieved a number of notable free climbs on El Capitan, the 3,000-foot monolith in Yosemite National Park, and has also established the hardest first ascent of a crack climb ever done by a woman. She has been climbing for thirty years, and she hopes to be climbin...

Sydney Palmer-Leger is one of the young cross country ski racers on the US National B team. She made a quick trip to Falun, Sweden for the season finale, where she skied to her best-ever World Cup result -- a 23rd place. Right before Falun, Sydney capped off a stellar collegiate career with a victory at the NCAA National Championships in Steamboat, Springs Colorado. Sydney is a three-time NCAA Nat...

Kendra Coleman is a professional track and field athlete sponsored by Oiselle. She is currently focused on the Olympic Track & Field Trials in Eugen, Oregon June 21-30, 2024, where she will compete in the 800. Her top accomplishments include her Highschool UIL State Championship in the 400 meters and a 9th place finish at 2016 Olympic Trials in the 800 meters. Kendra is also the Senior Administrat...

Ski Coach, Julia Hayes grew up skiing, running, cycling, climbing, and hiking in Frisco, Colorado. She attended and cross country ski raced for Montana State University, graduating with a degree in exercise physiology. She has been coaching with Bridger Ski Foundation for five years, where she works with high school/early college age skiers. In 2023, she earned the opportunity to coach at the Juni...

Wang Ping is a poet, writer, photographer, installation artist, founder and director of Kinship of Rivers project. Her multi-media exhibitions include “Kinship of Rivers: We Are Water,” “Behind the Gate: After the Flood of the Three Gorges,” and hundreds of other installation exhibitions at schools, colleges, galleries, museums, lock and dams, confluences around the world, including the interactiv...

Leann Bentley is the Press Officer/Attaché for the Stifel U.S. Cross Country Ski Team and Communications Manager at U.S. Ski & Snowboard. Based in Park City, Utah, Leann has been with the team for almost two years and is inspired daily by the incredible athletes and staff, pushing her to keep raising the bar and doing what she can to elevate the sport and athletes to new levels. Originally from Wy...

Kristen Bourne has coached cross country skiing at the collegiate and professional level for the past four years. She was the assistant coach at The College of Saint Scholastica for two years where she was a 2021 Women’s Sports Foundation Tara VanDerveer Fellow. During the summer, she was an assistant coach with the Craftsbury Green Racing Project professional team in Vermont. Prior to coaching, s...

Madeline Depman is early on in her career as a professional mountain biker. She completed her first bike race when she was 16, which was her first introduction to being part of any competitive sport. Since then, she has been working hard to gain fitness and technical skills with the goal of being one of the best in the country. In 2021 she raced her first Cross Country Mountain Bike World Cup in S...

Erin Bianco began skiing as a young kid in Ely, Minnesota, which is right on the Canadian border. Erin graduated with a sociology degree from Colby College in Maine. There, she was a leader on the Colby Mules cross country ski team under coach Tracey Cote. After college, Erin moved to Bozeman, Montana to train with the Bridger Ski Foundation (BSF) team under former U.S. Ski Team athlete and now co...

Dr. Margo Mountjoy received her medical education and her family medicine training at McMaster University, Canada and her sports medicine specialty degree in Ottawa, Canada. Margo received her PhD from the VU University in Amsterdam. Margo was the medical and scientific lead at the Health & Performance Centre at the University of Guelph where she focused her practice on promoting elite athlete car...

Jessie Diggins grew up in Afton, Minnesota where she started skiing with her parents as a very young girl. Now she is one of the most dominant and successful cross country skiers in the world. Jessie is a three-time Olympic medalist, 2023 World Champion, 17x World Cup winner, and 2021 World Cup overall winner. She’s been a US Ski and Snowboard Team athlete since 2011 and joined her current club te...

Kristen Rozell moved to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1997. She now works for a private consulting firm as a wildlife biologist conducting nesting studies on geese and sea duck on the North Slope of Alaska. She’s also worked all over the state conducting breeding bird and migration surveys. Kristen has been a cross country ski coach since 2004. She coaches a high school team, leads a training program for a...

Novie McCabe is a cross country ski racer on the APU Ski Team and U.S. Ski Team. She started skiing with her family at a young age. Since then, she has excelled in the sport and is racing at the highest level. She attended the University of Utah to pursue her skiing goals while studying. Novie notably swept the 2023 NCAA Championships in Lake Placid, NY winning both classic and skate races. This i...

Sophia Laukli is a force in both skiing and running. A professional in both sports, Sophia is a University of Utah graduate, member of the 2020 silver-medal-winning Junior World Championships relay team, had her first FIS World Cup podium in the final stage of the 2022-23 Tour de Ski and is fluent in English, Norwegian and French. From her first World Cup start in Lahti, FIN in January 2021, Sophi...

Born and raised in Park City, Utah, Rosie Brennan is a four-time U.S. champion, 2018 and 2022 Olympian, and ranked in the top-10 in the world for cross country skiing. Rosie is one of the strongest and most dominant athletes on the World Cup circuit. As she enters her 10th year on the national team, she has over 200 World Cup starts, nine podiums and two victories - she just landed on the podium T...

Gina Kennedy is a Professional Squash Player from London. She is currently ranked number 6 in the world, has won 11 titles on the PSA World Tour and is the 2022 Commonwealth Games Gold Medalist. Gina enjoyed a very successful junior career, holding nine national titles, a European title, and was ranked number 1 in England at every age group. In 2016, she began her studies at Harvard University. Wh...

2023 World Championship medalist and 2022 Olympian Julia Kern is making a name for herself as one of the fastest sprinters in cross country skiing. Julia is a 2022 Olympian and World Championship bronze medalist. She has secured two podiums in the ultra-competitive World Cup field, becoming the youngest American to podium on the World Cup, is a four-time National Champion, was the U23 World Champs...

Molly Bookmyer is long distance runner who is a member of the Oiselle Underbird Team. She lives and trains in Columbus, Ohio with her husband Eric and dog Cooper. She holds a degree in Operations Management from The Ohio State University and works full time in Supply Chain. She currently holds personal bests of 2:30:37 in the marathon and 1:10:51 in the half marathon.  Get involved and support the...

Jessie Diggins grew up in Afton, Minnesota where she started skiing with her parents as a very young girl. Now she is one of the most dominant and successful cross country skiers in the world. Jessie is a three-time Olympic medalist, 2023 World Champion, 14x World Cup winner, and 2021 World Cup overall winner. She’s been a US Ski and Snowboard Team athlete since 2011 and joined her current club te...

Barb Broad is a 73-year old runner who lives and trains in Cleveland, Ohio. Barb is a retired Speech-Language Pathologist who discovered running, thanks to one of her sporty female friends, when she was 40 years old. Instantaneously, she loved the sport, becoming more and more passionate about it…she trained with coaches, went to a nutritionist, and general fully committed to being the best she co...

Janee’ Kassanavoid is a professional Nike Track and Field athlete and competes for Team USA. As a Nike N-seven ambassador she is representing culture and sharing the journey to gold as a Native Athlete. Janee’ is a member of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma. She was born and raised in Lawson, Missouri and grew up as a multi-sport athlete, lettering in softball, volleyball, basketball, and track & f...

High school senior Jaydyn McKinney has been wrestling for fifteen years. She is a 2x Ohio High School state champion which makes her the only athlete to win a back-to-back state championship for her high school. She’s currently ranked 16th in the country at 135 pounds and has won multiple national and state titles. Even though she’s the only girls on her high school team, she is one of the team ca...

Liz Derstine is a musician, runner, writer, and as of 2020, a long-distance hiker. On July 7, 2020, she embarked on the life-altering adventure of through-hiking the 2,193-mile Appalachian Trail, as quickly as possible. Now, having had several years to reflect on this epic journey, Derstine tells her whole AT story: from what inspired her to want to hike the entirety of this daunting trail, to how...

Katherine Stewart-Jones was born and raised in Chelsea Quebec in the heart of the Gatineau Park. It was there that she started skiing with her family as soon as she could walk. she did began competing at local events when she was 5, BUT she was an all -around active kid. Like lots of Hear Her Sports guests, she did a wide range of sports including soccer, sailing, kayaking, canoeing and downhill s...

Hayley Simmonds has been a full-time, professional cyclist since completing her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at The University of Cambridge in 2016. To date she has won two Elite British TT titles and 17 Cycling Time Trials National titles. She also holds three British TT records (at 10, 25 and 50 miles) and was the first woman to break the 50-minute barrier for a 25-mile time trial. Internationally...