“She’s going through a lot of things that would make other people bitter,” Nesi says.

FINDING HER PASSION

When she was younger, Sarubbi says she played softball, soccer, and basketball at the community level in her hometown, but she did not discover disabled athletics until 2001.

After Sept. 11, 2001, an organization called Disabled Sports USA wanted to honor New York City firefighters, including Sarubbi’s father, John. The nonprofit invited firefighters with children with disabilities to Breckenridge, Colo., for a week of skiing.

That week in Breckenridge—the first time Sarubbi was introduced to disabled sports—was the beginning of her skiing career.

Upon returning to New York, she met with people from the Adaptive Sports Foundation. She became a student there, joined the ski race team, and then decided to aspire for the Paralympics.

For Paralympic skiers to race, they must have a guide who skis in front of them and leads them down the mountain. The guide and Sarubbi communicate via walkie-talkies, where the guide tells her to head right or left and informs her of upcoming obstacles.

Within a nine-year span, Sarubbi had her first experience in disabled sports, learned to ski, and became a Paralympic-level skiier.

“It just kind of snowballed,” she says.

THE PARALYMPIC DREAM

A year after leaving Harvard following the fall semester of her freshman year, Sarubbi found herself headed to Vancouver for the 2010 Paralympics. During her time there, she competed in all five of the alpine skiing events: downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and super combined.

While she says the weather conditions made her events difficult, she came away with two sixth-place finishes and one eighth-place finish.

“Honestly, I’m happy with it. It’s the Paralympics,” she says. “You really can’t complain. It was awesome.”

Sarubbi notes that one of the best aspects of being in Vancouver was having her family there to support her. The Sarubbis are very close with their extended family and all live within a three-block radius.

The family showed the strength of its relationship when 35 members of Sarubbi’s extended family accompanied her to Vancouver. Sarubbi says that her father took a giant American flag and brought it with him to the Paralympics. He hung it so every camera could see it.