This year’s Silent Partner is a bit ironic. That is because our recipient has a big voice and personality which was amplified by COVID operations. Our recipient is Rachel Freeman of Vail-Summit Orthopedics. 

In a normal year Rachel’s role at VSO is to be our Athletic Trainer. She coordinates the care for our injured athletes and assists them with return to sport. 

But during COVID she also agreed to be our COVID coordinator. This resulted in Rachel having to manage all of our COVID testing and quarantines. Unfortunately, that meant she was communicating a lot of bad news through the season. 

In addition, this also meant that she had to attend all of our hosted competitions and be the person reminding people to wear their masks and stay 6’ apart. With a bunch of enthusiastic coaches and athletes, this was the most tedious, thankless task anyone did this season. Rachel had to endure everything from eye-rolling to people telling her wearing masks was dumb to getting ‘the finger’ from visiting coaches. 

There was not a more unrewarding task that anyone did. But we got through the season without any outbreaks or major COVID-related problems this season. 

Thank you Rachel for taking on this responsibility, as well as your ongoing efforts to keep our kids healthy and on the snow.