By Cliff White
Staff Writer
On a sunny December day at the Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry, Lacey Smith strapped on her snowboard, stood up and glided over to a group of red-jacketed volunteers from the Maine Handicapped Skiing (MHS) program. With the fluidity of a skilled boarder, she edged to a stop and began listen attentively to the clinic’s leader, who was conducting a course on the fundamentals of snowboarding for those with disabilities.
Only a few years ago, Smith, who has mild developmental disabilities herself, was learning how to ski with the help of MHS. Now Smith is a MHS volunteer, helping others to tackle the slopes with the confidence and skill she displays on every turn she makes.
Smith won’t go so far as to say she is obsessed with snowboarding, but she will say she really, really loves it. Enough to spend more than 40 to 50 days a year on the mountain.
“Enough to go out when it’s 15 below zero outside and the wind-chill is making it 25 below,” Smith’s mother, Martha Smith, says. “Enough to try to snowboard when they have all the lifts shut down except for one. Enough for everyone at the mountain to know her by name.”
Lacey Smith, 22, who lives in Hollis, began her on-mountain activity in 1996. After five years of skiing, she could ski black diamonds and double black diamonds – the most difficult trails on the rating system used at ski mountains – easily, she says. Wanting to move on to a bigger challenge, she took up snowboarding in 2001. Soon, Smith had advanced from MHS to taking public group lessons.  Snowboarding was tougher than skiing, Lacey Smith says, but eventually with hard work and dedication, she was taking on the hardest trails on the mountain, and succeeding.
“At first, I was thrilled just to see her on skis,” Martha Smith says. “But every year she showed such improvement, to the point where she is just as good as anyone else out there, and better than a lot of people on the mountain. It’s remarkable to see just how good she is.”
Like an alchemist’s wizardry, Lacey Smith began to translate her skills on the mountain into gold, silver and bronze. Smith has competed in the Special Olympics Winter Games, hosted at Sugarloaf in Carrabassett Valley, since 1997. During the last ten years, Smith has collected a box full of medals from victorious efforts on the slopes at Sugarloaf in both skiing and snowboarding, as well as snowshoeing, in which Smith participated before she knew how to ski.
The Special Olympics were created out of a concept that individuals with intellectual disabilities were far more capable in sports and physical activities than experts at the time thought, according to the organization’s Web site, www.specialolympics.org. The first games took place in Illinois in 1968 and offered competitions in many sports based on the Olympic tradition and spirit.
In 1970, a handful of athletes joined together on the Kiwanis Hill in Gorham to show their skills in alpine and Nordic skiing. The following year, the games had grown enough to move to Saddleback Mountain in Rangeley and by 1982 moved again – this time to Sugarloaf. This year’s competition, which took place Jan. 27 through Jan. 29, marked the 38th consecutive year of the winter games and saw more than 500 athletes in competition.
Competitions at the winter games include snowshoeing, speed skating dual ski, alpine and Nordic skiing, but the event involves more than competition – it provides a welcoming social environment, says Martha Smith.
“There’s a torch light parade, a fireworks show, a celebratory dinner and a victory dance,” says Martha Smith. “So much of the event is just about community, about making friends, socializing and having fun.”
In her first year in the Olympics, Lacey Smith participated in snowshoeing. But as her skills on the mountain increased, she began skiing in alpine events. Her transition to snowboarding complicated her performance in the Olympics – at first, she says, she was told she would not be able to compete because, as she was the only snowboarder, there was no competition. But advocacy on the part of her parents and organizers allowed her to participate as a snowboarder in the alpine skiing events.
This year, though she had originally signed up to race for a 10th consecutive year, Lacey Smith passed on competing as an athlete. Instead, Smith decided to work at the games as a coach for another participant, a teenaged skier named Matt.    
Martha Smith said her daughter’s duties as a coach included accompanying Matt through his warm-ups, giving him tips and encouragement and skiing down next to Matt to guide him along the course. Speaking as someone with the knowledge of what a coach can do for an athlete, Lacey Smith says, “it really helps to get that encouragement.
“It helped with his nerves,” Lacey Smith says. “He was afraid he was going to fall but he didn’t. I helped him with learning how to leave the starting gate.”
As for the experience of coaching, Lacey Smith says, “I loved doing it. Helping someone win a medal feels better than winning it yourself. It gave me a chance to be on the other end of the Special Olympics, to give back to a community that has welcomed me.”
Martha Smith agreed.
“Lacey has done a lot of taking advantage of all the services provided. The fact that now she feels good enough about it to turn around and give back – and that she loved doing it – shows her sense of responsibility.”
Martha Smith’s motherly pride had never been greater than when she saw her daughter schussing down the slope as a coach with Matt, she says.
“It’s amazing to see how far Lacey has progressed in the sport. It’s gone far beyond what anyone thought she could do,” Martha Smith says. “But it goes to show what kind of results can happen if you put in a little bit of time and trust. It takes hard work and effort on the parts of everyone involved, but to see the way kids can blossom the way Lacey has, it makes every minute and ounce of energy worth it.”