#50for50: Volume 16
▪️ Kia Hill
▪️ 31 years old
▪️ Fairfax County, Virginia
“I joined Special Olympics in Fall 2007 and that allowed me to get into sports. I was doing soccer and basketball and I used to do track, too. It was new. I didn’t play sports before, so I had to learn and grow, like I’m doing now with skiing. I love to exercise. It’s good to stay active and it gives you something to do on the weekends. And I think it’s important to be outdoors more rather than be in the house. … Making friends is definitely one of my favorite things because it allows you to get involved with more people, you can do more things, you can travel more. And it also allowed me to meet my husband. We met through Special Olympics basketball practice. I don’t know why he doesn’t want to do basketball anymore because that’s how we met. But where he’s from, they have a lot of snow in Russia, so he did skiing when he was growing up and we’re doing that now. … I work at a daycare and I absolutely love it. It’s like my second home. I’ve been there over a year. My main room is with the 2- and 3-year-olds. When I’m in the infant room, I feed the babies their bottles, change their diapers, help them play with the toys. And I help them walk. … It’s really my dream to bring home two gold medals because I really feel deep inside like I need to show my family how much I really want to learn more skiing. And so if I bring them gold medals, they might have a change of heart. Or at least, I’m hoping. They don’t understand. And I tell my dad all the time that when you start skiing, your body heats up. But he doesn’t want to be out there in the cold. But the thing is, they won’t know until they do. Next year, I want to be able to do the longer races, so I need practice. Like, how to make the pizza with your skis, I still need work on that. … I’m a sweet, loving, caring person. I care about how everyone does. I just feel like everyone works so hard, so they deserve to get a medal.”
