The Next Step For Rising Teen Jack Berry Is A European World Cup Trip

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by Alex Abrams

Jack Berry competes at the continental cup races in West Yellowstone, MT, in January 2025. (Photo by Gretchen Powers Film)

Jack Berry was sitting in his high school history class when he checked his email and saw a message from Eileen Carey, director of U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing. The subject line simply read, “Italia.”

When Berry opened the email, he learned from Carey that he had qualified to compete at a Para Nordic skiing world cup event in Val Di Fiemme, Italy, in early February.

“Oh my gosh, I was over the moon when I found out,” the 17-year-old high school senior from Missoula, Montana, recalled.

Berry is set to race against some of the world’s top standing skiers at an international event. It will be a major test for the teenager, who was named to the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing development team in June.

It will also move him a step closer to his goal of qualifying for the U.S. national team next season and his even bigger goal of someday competing at the Paralympic Winter Games.

“I would like to say I have no expectations (at the world cup), but I always set a high bar for myself,” said Berry, who became a Para Nordic skier in 2019 after major leg surgery relating to a rare type of bone cancer. “So, I’m expecting hopefully a good performance out of myself, but it will be really just a good learning process and great experience for me.”

Berry said he worked this past offseason on getting stronger and into better shape. To do so, he increased the amount of training he did over the summer with strength training in the gym and plenty of time on roller skis.

He often trained twice a day, and he said he’s already seeing the results only a few weeks into the new skiing season.

“It always feels hard. I never have had a race where I get to the finish line and feel not winded,” Berry said. “But I’d say there’s certain levels of comfortability on skis. I’m feeling very good on skis right now, and when I’m out there, I feel strong and I feel like I’m moving with speed. I’m seeing it in my results, too, a little bit.”

Berry has gotten off to a promising start to the season. He recovered from the flu in time to compete in a series of Continental Cup races sanctioned by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation in West Yellowstone, Montana.

Berry won the classic cross-country skiing sprint race on Jan. 11 when he crossed the finish line in 3 minutes, 8.69 seconds. Two-time Paralympian Dani Aravich, who’s a member of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing national team, finished in second place at 3:22.78 in her first race since recovering from mononucleosis.

“I felt good. I’d just gotten off of the flu, so I had the flu all that whole week and went into racing. The body was definitely pretty shocked,” Berry said. “It was a fun race because I got to race against my teammates that I wouldn’t normally like Dani Aravich. That was so fun. It added a kind of competitive nature to our team dynamic.”

Berry also competed in his first biathlon race while in West Yellowstone. He described the race as “pretty interesting,” and it gave him a chance to learn more about the event since he plans to compete in it more this season.

Berry has traveled to Europe several times over the past year to get in additional training time on snow. In April, he was selected to participate in a training camp with other development athletes from across the globe in Livigno, Italy.

Five months later, Berry was among a group of seven skiers who spent a week training inside an underground ski tunnel in Oberhof, Germany. He said he was “blown away” by the experience provided by U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing.

Since the conditions inside the ski tunnel don’t change, Berry was able to ski on thousands of kilometers of manmade snow and then walk outside of the ski tunnel into temperatures in the 80s.

“It was an amazing experience for me, mostly just because of the novelty of being in a ski tunnel,” Berry said. “… It was really neat to be able to be inside and to see those resources that they have. I remember the whole week I was just in awe, my mouth wide open and a smile (on my face), and I was having a great time. I got to go with some really close buddies of mine, so that was really cool. I love that opportunity.”

He’s about to embark on another trip to Europe, this time for a world cup.

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic and Paralympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USParaNordic.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.

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