By David Woods

david.woods@indystar.com

LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — America's next superstar skier didn't grow up near the mountains of Colorado or Utah, and he didn't hang out at the resorts of New Hampshire or Vermont.

Nick Goepper's footprints through the snow to the Olympic Winter Games began in Indiana.

He skied 12 hours a day where the largest hill has a vertical drop of only 400 feet. He built a skateboarding park in the backyard, mimicked the skills of his gymnast sisters and sold candy bars to raise money for his dream.

He combines old-fashioned work ethic and family sacrifice with X Games creativity and sponsor support. He studies film with the devotion of a Peyton Manning and features the rumpled sex appeal of a Ryan Lochte.

Goepper, 19, is ranked No. 1 in the world for the second consecutive year in the freestyle skiing event of slopestyle. He could become one of the athletes featured prominently by NBC at the Sochi Olympics.

"If he crosses the finish line, I don't see anyone else who could beat him," said his coach, Mike Hanley.

Slopestyle, which is new to the Olympics, features tricks and jumps along a course laid out with ramps and rails. It is an apt metaphor for the twists and turns that have taken Goepper on an improbable journey from the prairie to ski champion.

"It kind of taught me — I mean, it's a cliché — but to never give up," Goepper said. "There's always going to be roadblocks. But if you really want to succeed at something, you have to not worry about it."

He grew up in the Hidden Valley area of Lawrenceburg (pop. 10,444), about 15 minutes from Perfect North Slopes, a ski resort in southeastern Indiana. Most of the snow comes not from the sky but is made on site. Goepper skied there from age 5 until he enrolled in Windells Academy in Sandy, Ore., at 15.

Paradoxically, he skied more often in Indiana — as many as 100 runs in a day — than peers did in the mountains.

"I get the same question all the time: 'Where do you ski in Indiana?'" he said on a recent trip home. "Honestly, I have more fun skiing here than most places."

Location was convenient. Lift lines were short. Days were long.

When not in school, Goepper was skiing 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. He wouldn't allow interruptions, so when buddies went into the lodge to eat or rest, he stayed on the snow.

He was the gym rat of the slopes. No one had more reps.

"Shoot free throws, shoot free throws, shoot free throws," said Chris Goepper, his father. "Shoot layups, shoot layups. Jump shots, jump shots. Same thing."

Conditions are imperfect at Perfect North. But Goepper would be out there, rain, sleet or slush. He didn't grow up in a ski community, wasn't trying to be cool and didn't suffer from what his coach called "Breckenridge-itis." Breckenridge, Colo., is home to a pristine ski resort that has a vertical drop of 3,400 feet.

Hanley said skiers from the East embrace unfavorable conditions and develop a different mentality. It is a desirable difficulty.

"Wherever they go," Hanley said, "they're going to max out."

It's in the genes

Although universally lauded for his work ethic, Goepper's rise can be attributed to nature as much as nurture. At least that's what mom believes.

A neighbor went pale when she noticed the 2-year-old crawling along the railing of the Goeppers' backyard deck, but Linda Goepper just knew her son would not fall.

The mother theorized Nick derives sense of balance from her maternal grandfather, Paul Brown, who once tipped a mini-scooter with a sidecar and drove across a creek on a narrow board. Another time, the grandfather walked into a party attended by high school football players, bent his knee and squatted on one foot to touch that knee to the floor. The rest of the night, the teens tried to do likewise, and failed. Nick can do it.

"I've always felt like grandpa was with him," Linda Goepper said. "He just had some unique physical attributes that seem to always have protected him."

Yet Nick isn't the most nimble of four siblings. Sisters Kasey, 17, and Bradee, 14, advanced as far as Level 9 in gymnastics until both quit because of injuries. (Level 10 gymnasts merit college scholarships.)

When they tried what Nick called "stupid human tricks," he said Kasey and Bradee kicked his butt.

"It was really humbling to get beat by my own sisters," he said.

The sisters were his first coaches. They knew fundamentals involved in twisting and spinning, offering tips or identifying flaws. Before competitions, they would coach him over the phone, especially in mental readiness.

"He really relied on the girls to help prepare him because they understood, much better than I do, what he needs to hear," Goepper's mother said.

Goepper's father also traces his son's ascent to ancestry. Nick is a first-born, something that researchers conclude results in more attention from parents and more ambition in the child.

"He's the firstborn of two firstborns," Chris Goepper said. "It's a strength and a curse.

"He's got two speeds: Off. Fast. There's no medium."

Nick isn't as reckless as those in his sport might appear. He has built a video library showing ski tricks, and he studies film as faithfully as any football coach before a big game. He tests on a trampoline before going off a ramp.

"So he would have visualized himself doing that front flip so many times that by the time he did it," his mother said, "his body and his brain thought he'd already done it."

A boy in perpetual motion

Nick Goepper doesn't recall a time when he wasn't on skis. His parents do. He first put them on when he was 5, and he didn't like any of it. Skis were slippery, boots did not fit, lessons were required, he could not move freely.

It was all unfamiliar, and his mother said he simply does not like change. That he overcame such initial reluctance helps him now, he said.

"New and strange and new territory is fun," he said, "and it's cool to adapt and figure things out on your own."

You name it, and Nick tried lots of new sports: fishing, swimming, diving, soccer, football, cycling, trampoline, skateboarding, surfing, rollerblading.

He tried basketball for a year, and did not like it.

"I'm ashamed to say that," he said.

At 10, he qualified for the age-group state swim meet in a relay and was urged to practice six days a week. He handed the swim club's letter to his mother with a succinct message: Can't give up skiing.

It would seem a future Olympian would wow the crowd when he started freeskiing competition at age 11. There were 47 youths at his first big meet ... he finished 45th.

"And it was one of the best nights of my life," Goepper said. "There was a big crowd, there was music. I totally beefed my jump. I totally did not land it. But it was so fun."

There is no discouragement when you're that euphoric.

Freeskiing has no defined off-season training, so Goepper improvised. A neighbor built a half-pipe and skate ramps on blacktop that was supposed to be for basketball. That's where he first learned a back flip.

The Goeppers laid down rails in their backyard, abandoning all attempts to maintain a lawn. It's a "mud pit," the mother said. Nick soaped down the rails, slid on his skis and landed in Astroturf "for hours and hours," he said.

With their father, a traveling salesman, out of town, the siblings built steps going up a tree to a 7-foot platform so they could jump from there onto a trampoline. The steps were disassembled before dad got home.

Last winter, Nick and his sisters filled garbage cans with snow and piled it in the yard. He ramped up against the side of the house on skis, cracking the siding.

In summer, Nick and brother Jason, now 12, skateboarded downhill while Kasey drove a car behind them with hazard lights flashing. When they returned to the top of the hill, Nick didn't ride in the car but instead gripped through a window and was pulled up the street on his wheels. Dad didn't know about that, either.

"We always have a fun time when Nick comes home," Kasey said.

Goepper wasn't home on winter weekends because his father drove him to competitions: North Carolina, West Virginia, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio.

He once wanted to compete at the Vermont Open, but his parents couldn't transport him. So, at 14, he rode a bus from Cincinnati to Cleveland and traveled to Vermont with a friend. There he acquired his first sponsors, Under Armour and Volkl boots.

Goepper reasoned that to continue progressing, he would need to enroll at a ski academy, costing $40,000 a year.

His mother estimated that she was already spending $500 a month on gas, driving his sisters to the gym in Fairfield, Ohio, and Nick from East Central High School in St. Leon to Perfect North. There were fees for gymnastics. Worse, the father became unemployed. The stay-at-home mother was about to purchase a tax franchise.

Goepper was as innovative in fund-raising as he was on the slopes. He wrote his biography and shared it door- to-door, asking if he could do odd jobs: mowing, weeding, staining.

"Most of the time, they'd just tell me to scram and give me 20 bucks," he said.

There was a sign on his front lawn – Dependable Babysitting, call Nick – but police told the family it was against local code and must be removed. So the sign vanished ... until it was re-posted a month later.

Goepper bought candy bars in bulk and sold them out of his backpack to schoolmates for $1 each. That netted $500, and he raised perhaps $1,500 altogether – not quite 4 percent of the amount needed.

"I think, more than anything, it showed my parents I was driven and motivated to pursue my passion," he said.

The family learned "to live on nothing" during the financial downturn, Linda Goepper said. There were no movies, video games or cable TV. A big outing? Hiking.

Pull together or pull apart? The mother said the siblings grew closer. The parents candidly acknowledged it was a strain. Chris Goepper credited his wife for getting everyone through the "craziness" they all endured.

"And we stayed married through it all. We made it through the tough years," the father said.

Goodbye, Indiana; hello, Oregon

The only ski academies that the Goeppers knew about were in the East. On a summer vacation, they visited one in Ludlow, Vt.

They couldn't afford it.

They drove from there to the Olympic training center at Lake Placid, N.Y., and were encouraged to contact Kerry Miller, an influential figure in the ski industry. Miller calls himself the COB — Crusty Old Bastard — and can be mysterious and elusive. It took Chris Goepper three weeks to contact him.

A meeting was arranged at Ohio Dreams, an action sports camp in Butler, Ohio. They met there again a week later. Goepper was impressive enough to set in a motion a process directing him to Windells Academy. He was placed on scholarship and began skiing on Mount Hood.

Miller had also guided Jeret "Speedy" Peterson, an aerial skier who won an Olympic silver medal and is best known for his Hurricane maneuver, featuring five spins and three somersaults. Peterson befriended Goepper and encouraged the COB to take care of the young Hoosier as Miller had done for him.

When Peterson committed suicide in July 2011, Miller heard the news in an Oregon parking lot. He wept. With him was Goepper, then 17, who tried to console the man who was a father figure to so many.

Miller said he sees Speedy in Goepper, except Goepper is not the tortured soul that Speedy was. The background of Miller's cell phone is a photo of the two skiers together, Goepper holding Speedy's 2010 silver medal.

Goepper has "a real family around him," Miller said. "I took the energy of the loss of Speedy and poured it into him."

Goepper finished high school through Windells and online courses. He got a real coach for the first time, Hanley, who conceded they butted heads for months. But results soon affirmed the training was working.

Goepper was finishing in the top three on the Dew Tour, a circuit for extreme sports, and followed that with silver and gold medals in the Winter X Games of 2012 and '13.

Goepper is now a full-time pro athlete, traveling to camps in New Zealand and the Rocky Mountains. His sponsors include Red Bull.

He lives out of a suitcase during the season, sharing a condo in Frisco, Colo., with about 15 other skiers.

And he's on his way to being a star.

He has the same agent as diver David Boudia and gymnast Nastia Liukin. He was invited to the recent Golden Globes, where he was promoted by NBC and introduced to celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts and Taylor Swift.

Goepper never aspired to be an Olympian. His sport wasn't added to the Olympic program until 2011. Yet he has welcomed the entry of the so-called rebel sport into the mainstream and wants to enhance its evolution.

Goepper will do his part for the sport in the X Games at Aspen, Colo., on Friday (preliminaries) and Sunday (finals), and at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia on Feb. 13.

"More people are going to know about it, and more kids are going to come out here and hit these rails," he said. "It's all going to trickle down."

Maybe even to another dreamer in Indiana.

Call Star reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195.