Julia Clukey, a 27-year-old Olympic and National Champion luger from Augusta, spoke at Wiscasset High School on April 5, where she encouraged trying new things, setting goals, and working hard.
Clukey came to speak as part of the Maine Beer & Wine Distributors Association’s Responsibility Tour, which has been running for the past three springs.
Nick Alberding, the president of the association, said the group feels they have some ownership in educating people about responsibility.
“Rather than us getting up and preaching,we wanted to find a face to the campaign that kids can relate to,” Alberding said. “She’s been a home-run.”
Clukey is currently ranked 6th overall in the sport of luge, having won the Norton USA Luge National Championship last year and two silver medals in the Senior World Cup in February, according to a press release.
Clukey started in luge at age 13, when she and a friend attended a recruiting event in Portland and was soon after invited to continue in the sport at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York.
“I still remember the first run I took on the luge. I was so nervous going into it, but the by the time I got to the bottom it was the greatest thing I had ever experienced in my life,” Clukey said. “It was the one thing I knew I was going to do.”
“It’s really important when you’re faced with new opportunities to try new things and challenge yourself,” she said.
She was invited to compete in the Junior World Cup in Europe, and found herself surrounded by all kinds of people striving for the same goal – to be the best at luge.
“It was then I realized where this sport could take me and what I could do with it if I was willing to work hard,” Clukey said.
At age 17, after four years on the Junior World Cup circuit, a spot opened up on the Senior World Cup tour.
Clukey said she thought she was ready to move up, but her coach did not share her level of excitement. The two sat down and made a list of all the areas where she would need to improve in order to be competitive on the Senior circuit.
Clukey started a training journal, where she planned and tracked her progress toward making those improvements, and when the tryouts came she had a full book of everything she had done to prepare.
“It was a like a concrete confidence booster for myself, because I could look through the pages and see all the work and all the time I had spent to get ready for this moment,” she said.
Though she was only hoping to make the fourth spot on the team, Clukey ended up winning the second spot, beating out two other veteran athletes. The experience helped reinforce how important hard work and setting goals are, she said.
“To this day, I’m constantly setting goals for myself and moving myself forward,” she said.
Clukey’s first failure in luge was when she failed to make the 2006 U.S. Olympic team. She felt sad, angry, and embarrassed to have to share the fact that she did not make the team with her friends and family.
“I woke up one day and I realized this was not going to be my defining moment in the sport. It wasn’t who I was as a person,” Clukey said. “The only way this failure was going to define me was if I let it define me.”
Clukey finally made the Olympic team in for the 2010 season, but during the following year she faced chronic headaches and symptoms on the right side of her body that lead to a diagnosis of Arnold-Chiari Syndrome, a malformation of the brain that required her to undergo surgery.
It took 14 months from the surgery until she felt like an athlete again, but the time was important to let her body heal, Clukey said.
“It was very frustrating that I wanted to accomplish all these things in the sport but I had to sit there and watch all my teammates go on without me,” she said.
Now fully recovered, Clukey has had her best season yet, finishing 6th in the Senior World Cup standings and winning her first national championship. She is gearing up for the 2014 Olympics, with a plan of action in place to meet her goals.
“I’m ready for anything,” she said.
“About a third of you raised your hands when you said you had something that you loved to do,” Clukey said. “The rest of you, I encourage you to have that and set goals for yourself. Go home tonight and think about what it is that’s important to you, your sport or your music or whatever that activity is and decide where you’re going to let it take you.”
Clukey encouraged the students who have not found their passion to keep trying new things and meeting new people because they will find something that they are meant to do.
“Be ready to push yourself as far as you want to go,” she said.