There’s an old ski saying that goes ‘friends don’t let friends teach friends’. Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce must not have heard that memo.
On the latest episode of the New Heights podcast with his brother Travis, Jason Kelce recalled the time he and his wife Kylie went skiing together for the first time.
The pair took a trip out to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado – where Jason tried (and failed) to teach Kylie, who was going down one of the state’s most notorious slopes for her introduction to the sport.
‘We went to Aspen for the Winter X Games one year,’ Jason recalled. ‘We [Travis and Jason] had been skiing growing up – not a lot, but because we ice skated we kinda knew how to navigate.
‘We get to the place and… the person at the front who’s giving you your equipment is like “Okay, what’s your experience level skiing?” And I was like, “I haven’t done it in over a decade, but we did it enough growing up”. She was like, “Okay, your stuff’s over there.”
‘Then Kylie gets up there and they say “What’s your level of skiing expertise?” and she said, “I’ve never skied before in my life”. And the woman proceeded to tell her, “yeah you should go to a different mountain, there’s not a beginner hill on this mountain.”‘
‘I proceeded to tell her, “Listen, Ky, it’s not that hard. Pizza, French fry, it’s not that hard. You go at your own pace, it’s gonna be fine,”‘ Jason said, referring to the two beginner feet positions in skiing: pizza, when the tips of the skis are pointed to each other, and French fries when they’re parallel.
He continued, ‘We get off that lift and right away, ‘pizza’ ain’t slowing her down. She’s ‘pizza’-ing and she’s ‘pizza’-ing down the mountain and I’m like “oh no, this is not good.” It took us 45 minutes to get down that hill – I guess it was a mountain technically. But hey, what an electric place that was we gotta go back to Colorado.
‘I can’t even do it justice talking about it. Like the amount of times she would just fall over and then I try to go slow motion, almost hurt myself, because I’m trying to teach her to slow herself down, I almost dislocate my hip.
‘I’m like “I’m done doing this, I’m gonna go at my pace now.” Left her out to dry again… that was cause Keelie [Anderson, wife of former Eagles safety Colt Anderson] was there, Keelie was there to help her.
‘We waited for about 20 minutes, tried to get her to figure it out and the only person who had patience anymore was Keelie and she stayed back. she was in good hands, Keelie knew how to teach better than I did.
‘I had never been on a mountain. Growing up in Ohio, pizza works on all the mountains in Ohio. Apparently pizza doesn’t work when you’re on top of Aspen Mountain or whatever it’s called.’
