Parthiv Krishna is a freshman at Stanford with a major in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Music. Parthiv is part of many groups on campus: Stanford Harmonics Acapella group, Stanford Student Robotics and the Stanford Ski and Snowboard team. Even with balancing three groups and his academics, Parthiv was able to train with the Ski Team to take on Nationals in 2019. This is his story.

I moved around a lot throughout my childhood. The place that I’d call home is Minnesota, which is where I am now. I played soccer and tennis as a kid, pretty much all the way through elementary and middle school. During 8th grade, my family relocated to Switzerland and I sort of felt like I had an obligation to start skiing. I ended up skiing a lot while there due to the literal Swiss Alps being within an hour of my house. Despite only spending a year there, I was hooked on skiing and wanted to continue when my family moved back to MN at the start of my freshman year of high school. I joined my high school’s alpine ski race team and put in countless hours to improve throughout my four years. I was competing against people who had been skiing since before they could walk.

I chose Stanford because I wanted to be at a school that would give me the best opportunity to study a variety of fields. Part of that was for my own varied interests, but most of it was to be exposed to a wide range of people and their wide range of interests. I am majoring in Electrical Engineering and minoring in Music.

Joining the Stanford ski racing team felt right because it was always my escape. Training and races are the one time that I can truly stop worrying about my classes or really whatever else is going on in my life. I can just focus on improving my skiing and getting faster. With my academic craziness and other life demands, skiing has always helped ground me and it gives me an avenue to let out some stress. There’s something so satisfying about the sound of blocking a slalom gate and it’s really hard to replicate that feeling elsewhere.

Skiing allows me to let out my stress and focus on something different. Another thing that makes me happy is the community and camaraderie of the ski team. By nature of being in Tahoe every weekend, we spend a lot of time together in the car rides and in the ski team cabin. It’s hard not to make friends when we are spending pretty much every minute from Friday to Sunday together! I am really grateful to have met so many amazing people from the Ski Team. There’s always so much that I learn – in a skiing sense, academic sense, and a life sense – when I’m with people who have gone through the same things that I’m currently going through. 

I’m proud that our team qualified for Nationals in 2019. We put in a lot of work throughout the season and had very consistent strong finishes in all of our races. I was excited to be a part of the 5-person team that would represent Stanford at Nationals, but unfortunately the pandemic prevented us from traveling to Lake Placid to compete. Since I’m a freshman, this was my first year in club sports so I’m looking forward to more years of growth and achievements.

The hardest part about being a Stanford Club Sport athlete is definitely balancing everything. Since my winter quarter weekends are spent entirely off-campus, it’s always a challenge to make sure that I’m staying on top of my academic work and fulfilling my other obligations. There are so many opportunities to explore and not nearly enough time in a day to do them all. Figuring out how to split my time between my different passions has been a challenge throughout this year but I’m glad that I’ve had the ability to such a broad variety of things. Since the team usually trains and races in the mornings, the race team often spends the afternoons together working on assignments. Though our classes don’t always overlap, there’s certainly a sense of solidarity as we juggle our athletic and academic sides. Outside of skiing, I enjoy being involved with the Stanford Harmonics acapella group and Stanford Student Robotics. The Harmonics have pretty much become my on-campus family and I’ve had so much fun developing musically by rehearsing and performing! With Robotics, I’m a part of the Extreme Mobility team and I’ve worked primarily on our dog-like “Pupper” legged robot.

Throughout my time at Stanford I have learned some valuable life lessons. Always be willing and excited to learn from others! Obviously that’s something that’s important in class but it is also applicable during sports. There’s always someone better and that’s certainly the case for me on the Stanford Ski Team. I like to use that as an opportunity to learn from them and improve my own skiing, either by observing or asking for tips! That’s something that I can apply to all aspects of life. I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to continue ski racing and to do so with such a supportive and kind group of teammates. I’m looking forward to continuing for the next few years and improving as a skier. 

To anyone who is considering doing club sports, definitely do it because it is so much fun and you will get a lot out of it.

- Parthiv Krishna, 23'