Flying Wright

I’m from Ellicott City, Maryland, born and raised. We’re about 10 to 20 miles outside of downtown Baltimore, so we’re definitely in the suburbs. But what’s really cool is Patapsco Valley State Park kind of forms an L around us. There are hundreds of miles of mountain biking trails there. 

I didn’t start mountain biking until 2020, when my dad started getting me out. Once he did, it was awesome, especially when I couldn’t drive yet, to just be able to ride to the trails. That was definitely a big bonus.

The Court 

As a kid, I tried every single sport you can possibly imagine. Football, soccer, hockey, volleyball, gymnastics. I tried everything, but I settled on swimming in fourth or fifth grade.

Our neighborhood was kind of tight. We had a group of families that would always hang out together, so there was always someone outside. We called it the court, and there was always someone hanging out there to play with.

I had a best friend who lived next door, and there was this little woods between us. We made a little hideout out of it and played there. At night, we had this game where one person would stand in the middle of the court, and we had to make our way around all the houses without being seen. It was like hide-and-seek, but more of a destination game.

My two favorite spots right now are the state park and the Chesapeake Bay. I feel absolutely at peace mountain biking the trails. And I can drive to the Chesapeake Bay, about 45 minutes away, and there’s this one little bay that’s always really calm. I love paddle boarding there. That’s my peace, my happy place.

The Foundation

My dad’s name is Michael, and my mom is Mary. I also have an older sister, Zoe, who just graduated from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

My dad is a chiropractor by trade. He originally trained as an architect, and then halfway through school switched to chiropractic. He also does ski patrol as a volunteer at a local resort on the side. He did Ironmans back in his day and some of the local triathlons around here. So when I started getting into triathlon, he helped me along.

My mom was a special education teacher before us. Then she stayed home with us, followed us everywhere, kept us active, kept us playing, kept us learning. She was super active because she was always chasing us everywhere. That was really nice.

They support me in everything I do. Even now that I’m in college, they still fly down on their own to come see me race. My dad also has mechanic skills because he worked in a bike shop for a while. He still helps me with recovery, stretch out, and all that stuff in between. My mom is there for everything: food, photos, support, cheering. It’s really incredible. I would not be able to do this without them.

The Water

My whole life, I did summer swim and was around the pool. That was kind of my mom’s rule. Either you swim or you find a different sport, but she really wanted us to be good at it and comfortable in the pool.

I was that kid who still swam with a rash guard on, even in competitive swim, until I was in sixth grade. It was embarrassing, but I didn’t want to take my shirt off. I was just that kid.

I started taking competitive swimming really seriously after 2020. I switched teams because my other team had some issues finding a pool, and with those new coaches I got really, really good pretty quickly. I made it until about ninth grade, after about three years of really competitive swimming, 20 plus hours a week. I just needed a break. It was a little too much for me, and I wasn’t really enjoying it.

That is kind of my whole thing. I just want to enjoy what I do. I didn’t stop swimming, but I ran a little bit, having a little fun. I was also starting to mountain bike at that time and doing the local mountain bike league for high schoolers, so I had a lot of connections to the off-road.

I was still swimming, and at this point I had done the Bay Bridge Swim, where I swam across the Chesapeake Bay between the two bridge spans, which is four and a half miles of often not very smooth water. I was getting super comfortable with open water.

Then I did my first triathlon, which was EX2, my local XTERRA in Maryland, between ninth and tenth grade. That race was a blast. I loved it, and I never looked back. I just kept doing triathlons after that.

Level Up

In my second year of triathlon, I decided to do a draft legal race. That summer I had gone to a draft legal camp with coaches I would later be coached by, and they said if I wanted to join their team the next year, maybe I should get a little draft legal under my belt and see how I liked it.

I started out mountain biking, so I had good handling skills on the road bike because of that. Right now, I go to Wingate University just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, and I work with Coach Rad (Nicholas Radkewich). I didn’t really know what I wanted to do academically for the longest time, so I was looking for a school where I could do triathlon and have room to grow and figure out what I wanted to do.

Wingate has the best triathlon program in the country right now, so it was kind of a no-brainer when I started talking to Coach Rad. They had the triathlon program, and they had a broad range of academics, and I was like, that’s kind of all I need. He wanted me there, so it was a good fit.

Junior to Pro

I was considering going pro this year, but I am glad in the end I stayed junior because I really wanted to continue with the Youth Tour and do the XTERRA Youth World Championship in Ruidoso for my last year.

All my XTERRA experience counts toward USAT acknowledgements if it is in the U.S. They have an off-road triathlon section, so you are in the rankings there too, not just road. They also have swim races and running races because at some of the multisport nationals, they have open water swim races and things like that. They compile all of those into their ranking database. 

I think I’m only here because of the community surrounding me in every sport. Even when swimming was hard, it was my teammates that helped me push through. My mountain biking team and racing community were incredibly welcoming, and two of my best friends now were my two hardest competitors throughout high school.

Run Wild

Running was the one thing I had not really done in the same way as swimming and riding. When I was a kid, I did Striders, which is like Girls on the Run for boys, maybe in fifth or sixth grade. I was an active kid, but I wouldn’t consider myself a runner. I’m still working on it. That’s still my weakest link, but I’m getting there.

Even running, something I have had to work on alone a lot, has been built by my coaches who have been there at the track with me, and my college teammates in the past year who have helped me grow so much.

I took a less than traditional path with running, not doing cross country or track in high school, but I think I have accepted that it was what was right for me. I likely would have been injured from pushing too hard physically, or burned out from pushing too hard mentally, because running is so tough on the body and mind.

Instead, I have come to enjoy it on my own. And I especially enjoy trail running with nature. It makes you feel like you’re flying.