The fastest athlete at the University of Oregon has never pulled away over the final meters to win at Hayward Field, and has never outsprinted a defender into the Autzen Stadium end zone. The honor belongs to School of Architecture and Allied Arts junior Laurenne Ross.
With skis clipped to her boots, Ross flies down the mountain at 75 miles per hour, a pace that has taken her all the way from the UO to the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
Born in Edmonton, Alberta, to avid skiers Janey Purvis and Robert Ross, Laurenne Ross started skiing at 18 months old, and estimates she was just six when she first tackled a Black Diamond-rated ski run. When Laurenne was seven, Robert was named director of Cascades East Family Medicine Residency in Klamath Falls, so the Ross family left Canada for Oregon and Laurenne swapped the Rockies for the Cascades.
While competing in Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy in January – where a 17th-place finish in the downhill represented her best World Cup finish of the season – Ross got the news every athlete dreams of.
“We had a meeting after the races in Cortina, and they told us there that we had made the Olympic team,” said Ross. “I was a little bit relieved and really excited obviously. This is my first Olympics, and my season thus far hasn’t been as spectacular as I hoped it would be.
“I feel really lucky, I feel really fortunate, and I know people believe in me because I haven’t had that amazing season that I’ve had in the past. It’s definitely starting to get better, and I feel really lucky and I’m psyched to be part of the team.”
This Duck now lives in Bend and calls the slopes of Mt. Bachelor home. However, being a professional athlete can cause some problems when you’re also a college student. This season alone, Ross has competed in the USA, Canada, Switzerland, France, Austria and Italy – all before arriving in Russia on Feb. 4 for the Olympics. That means Ross has to be selective about when she schedules her classes, balancing her time in Eugene with her commitments at ski resorts around the world.
“It’s definitely tough, but that’s why I go [to the UO] in the springs,” said Ross. “I don’t have time to go in the falls or winters, or even really the summers. I don’t really have the option of going to school during those times, but spring time is our downtime because our season ends at the end of March, so it’s the time where I have the most freedom. I just make it work. I really love it, so I try and go as much as I can.”
After briefly attending Westminster College in Utah, she returned home and enrolled in the art program at the University of Oregon, where older sister Allana earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009 and younger sister Hilary is currently working toward her physics degree.
“I have always been drawn to art, and Oregon’s art program is great,” said Ross. “If I ever want to switch my major to music, fortunately that is another good department at the university. I’ve been thinking recently about architecture, another strong program at the UO, so all of my preferences are promising and positive here.
“It’s so close to home it just makes it a lot easier. For me it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my house, so if I want to go home on the weekends while I’m going to school I can do that. I usually have a lot of stuff going on in the spring like camps at Mt. Bachelor, but being in Eugene is really convenient. And I really love the U of O.”
Read more of Laurenne Ross’s story
- by Damian Foley, UO Alumni Association