Most Olympic hopefuls don’t have a representative from their national team continuously call and beg them to compete. Most Olympic hopefuls don’t attend law school, or have a husband participate in the same Olympic sport, just for a different national team.
But no one would dare call Felicia Canfield the stereotypical Olympic hopeful or the stereotypical U student.
Canfield has taken a leave of absence from her third year of law school as she strives to become one of the first 15 women to ever compete in the Olympics as a skeleton athlete.
She now trains each day in the Olympic Compound in Lake Placid, New York, in preparation for the Challenge Cup in Germany on Jan. 26. If she finishes in the top four, she will become an Olympian, something she didn’t even consider trying for a couple years ago.
Canfield’s Olympic run began when she was 13 years old, years before she had heard of skeleton. Her family moved to Samoa where she finished high school before going to Arizona for college.
While she attended Northern Arizona University, she met Brady Canfield, a math and physics major who was also a “weekend warrior.”
Brady and Felicia became cheer partners on the cheerleading squad their senior year. The day after graduation they were married.
Degrees in math and physics didn’t give Brady many job opportunities so he joined the Air Force as a scientist. This position moved the Canfields all over the country.
They spent four years in Cheyenne, Wyo., where they had their first two children, Sterling and Adrian. Then the Air Force transferred Brady to New York.
Felicia enrolled in Syracuse University and got a joint master’s degree in social work and international relations.
She worked at the United Nations, doing legal work on the cases of African refugees who had HIV and wanted asylum in the United States. Through this work, she found a love for law and decided she wanted to attend law school.
Around the same time, a classmate at Syracuse introduced Felicia to skeleton and suggest that she give it a try. Going head first down a sheet of ice at 80 miles per hour didn’t interest her much, but Felicia thought her weekend warrior would like it.
Brady did three half-mile runs on the last day of the season and was hooked. He became a member of the U.S. Skeleton team, but soon the Air Force transferred them to Florida where it is hard to find ice let alone a track to sled on. Brady traveled on the weekends as he pursued his Olympic dreams, but Felicia couldn’t follow her own dreams just yet.
She had her third child Colin and decided to stay home with him instead of starting law school.
With the Olympics only a couple years away, Brady put in for a transfer to Hill Air Force Base so he would be close to the Olympic track. Felicia decided to apply to the U College of Law at the same time.
“We both got what we asked for,” Felicia said. “We are really lucky.”
Surviving the first year of law school, while she tried to take care of three children kept Felicia on her toes. Her second year wasn’t much easier, because that was when she fell in love with skeleton.
“I had no desire to do it for years and years and years. I was a good spectator,” she said. But a friend had an empty seat on a passenger bobsleigh at the Olympic Sports Park. She jumped in and loved every minute of the ride.
“I thought I would like skeleton even more because you drive yourself,” she said.
Felicia asked Brady to sign her up for a skeleton class and she excelled.
The America Samoa national team got wind of Felicia, and Taylor Boyd started calling her.
“He just called and called and called,” Felicia said.
“I started hounding her about sledding for us,” said Boyd, a former bobsledder who is now the team captain of the America Samoa skeleton and bobsleigh teams.
While flattered by the calls, Felicia was reluctant. She didn’t have a sled or the money to get to the 2001 Challenge Cup race. She had to take care of the kids and she was in law school.
But one by one solutions appeared.
She rented a sled from the skeleton school. A relative lent her the money. Neighbors promised to take care of her children. Law school administrators promised to help her make up for missing classes.
“I ran out of excuses, really,” she said.
Still, before she made the commitment, Felicia needed some counseling. Brady was gone for six weeks competing in World Cup races, so instead she turned to her three young boys.
Adrian told his 36-year-old mom, “you are not getting any younger, you better do it now.”
She agreed.
She went to Calgary, Canada for the Challenge Cup and came home with a bronze medals. That finish qualified her for the more prestigious World Cup that leads to the Olympics.
To continue her road to the Games she needed the help of her law school classmates. She came back from races to a stack of audio tapes her classmates made for her.
However, the breaks in her attendance didn’t affect Felicia’s success in the classroom.
She even won the Moot Courtroom competition last year. The annual competition pits 38 teams of two law students against each other. The teams must write a brief and conduct three oral arguments. Felicia and her partner bested the other teams throughout the competition.
“We are both so busy, we had so much on our plates,” she said. “Our goal the whole time was ‘let’s not humiliate ourselves.’ We kind of laughed our whole way through.”
Felicia’s classroom performance earned her a post-Games externship with Utah Supreme Court Justice Christine Durham. And after she finishes law school, Felicia also has a job waiting for her at Fabian and Clendenin, a Salt Lake law firm.
Boyd said it is Felicia’s mental toughness that makes her a good athlete.
Skeleton runs start with a 50 meter sprint. At the last World Cup race, Felicia ranked 24th in the world with a 6 second push. But once she got on the track and could use her driving ability she improved to eighth.
Her ability to handle the track has Boyd hopeful for a successful Olympic run for his athlete.
“She put off her career for a year to see if she could win a gold medal,” Boyd said.