Alana Nichols – 2010

Alana Nichols is our 2010 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year! Alana was an accomplished softball player in high school when, in the winter of 2000, she broke her back in a snowboarding accident. It left her paralyzed from the waist down. That’s an incredibly challenging lifestyle change especially when you are a senior in high school.

After two years of rehab, Alana came back to sports. In 2003 she began playing wheelchair basketball for the University of Arizona. She got back up on the ski slopes, this time on a mono-ski. Last year, 10 years after her accident, she went to the Paralympic Games in Vancouver and captured the gold medal in the Giant Slalom and Downhill. She won the silver in the Super G. She won bronze in the Super Combined.

Two years earlier, in 2008 in Beijing, Alana helped her U.S. Women’s Paralympic Basketball Team bring home the Gold medal. She is the first woman ever to earn two gold medals in two different sports on the Paralympic world stage! She’s a graduate of the University of Alabama with a master’s degree in Kinesiology and plans to specialize in exercise science working with Veterans and others with spinal cord injuries.

Congratulations to Alana Nichols, our award winner in adaptive skiing and our 2010 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year!