Meredith grew up in the Midwest with her mom, dad, and older sister. Most of that time was in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, but she also lived in a suburb of Chicago while in elementary school.
Her main sport was swimming which she did competitively from age 5-18. During her swim career, she learned a lot about discipline and how friends can make all the difference. She swam countless laps and countless flip turns and stayed to the right of a black line on the bottom of the pool to avoid crashing with a teammate for over a decade!
In addition to swimming, Meredith learned to ski at a young age in Wausau, Wisconsin, where her grandma lived and dad grew up. Every year she got to ski with her sister and cousins at Rib Mountain, where she risked her life to find adventure on the tee bar. She never knew what was going to happen while she waited for the bar to whisk her up the mountain. That ski ritual gave way to a few trips “out West”. Her first mountain ski trip was at Sun Valley in Junior High. On this trip, her family and her uncle’s family learned about “death cookies” and how to ski like a “gaper”. She recently came across the photos from this trip, and they are fabulous!
She experienced the Vail Valley for the first time at age 17 with her dad. He took her on her second ski trip “out West” when she was a senior in high school. On this trip, they were sure the rental car was stolen after 2 hours of searching in the Vail Parking Garage (it was not!), and they got snowmobiled out of Game Creek because they somehow found themselves at the bottom when the lift had already stopped. Can you imagine?
These experiences and a few others ignited her love for the mountains and mountain adventure. So, after PT school, a ski season in Jackson, two years in Albuquerque, one year in Mexico, and a contract job or two, she found herself in Vail working a seasonal job at the hospital.
During her first season and years in Vail, she knew she had found her home. The work, the adventure, the recreation, and the friendships she experienced were much more than she could have ever hoped or dreamed of.
Currently, Meredith (still) lives in Avon with her son and husband, Dan, who she deems to be the best dad in the world. More of her time is spent trying to keep up with them in hockey, skiing, baseball, fishing, and biking than anything else (but work). She has had an opportunity to fall in love with the river as her 8-year-old son, Calvin, is an avid angler and has been for 2 years now. She feels lucky to live on the river, near the mountain bike trails, across the street from the ski lift with her favorite people in the world.
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We love having Meredith as part of the Axis Sports Medicine team as one of our physical therapists in Eagle County, CO.