Greenville firefighter makes US bobsled team again
A year ago, it was all so new to Casey Wickline, a Greenville firefighter-turned-bobsledder.
On Monday, when the 2015-2016 USA Bobsled National Team was announced, Wickline was one of the veterans named to the squad, one of the guys expected to show the way for the six rookies.
"It wasn't easier this year, because they did a really good job of recruiting, and they had some amazing athletes come out," Wickline said Tuesday by phone from Lake Placid, New York, where the national team trials where held this past weekend.
"The pool of athletes was unbelievable this year. They had some guys who were former NFL players, some big-time track guys. But it was easier in that I knew what the process was, and I knew what they were looking for."
Wickline teamed with two-time Olympian Nick Cunningham to win the two-man race, and he teamed with Cunningham, Sam Michener and James Reed to take second in the four-person race.
Wickline, 29, earned a spot on one of the three sleds that make up the National Team. He's scheduled to leave Saturday for Park City, Utah, for testing. Then the top two teams — Wickline is a member of USA 2 — will depart for Germany in mid-November to begin World Cup competition.
Wickline said it won't be nearly as much of a grind as last season, when they were in Europe for nearly three months.
"This year, we'll basically be there for about a month, and then come home for Christmas, and then we'll have three races in North America, and then we'll go back to Europe to finish up the season," he said.
"It's so hard being in Europe for 11, 12 weeks, being away from your family for that long, and everything's just different. It's just tough."
Wickline worked all summer for the Greenville City Fire Department, all the while training in anticipation of his return to bobsledding.
He admits that making the team a second time puts him one step closer to his Olympic dream, but he knows there are so many more steps.
"I never thought about it, but everybody around the Olympic training center, they're very superstitious about the Games," he said. "You just don't want to jinx yourself, because everybody's goal, obviously, is to compete for your country at the Olympics. But you don't want to get ahead of yourself. Anything can happen. Injuries, somebody can have a standout year and take your spot on the team. ...
"But, yeah, in the meeting, they told us specifically, 'If we didn't see a future in you competing at the Olympics, then you wouldn't be on the team.' So they definitely see at least the potential to compete at the Olympics."
He points out they have all of this season and then two more before the 2018 Games in South Korea.
"But we're looking good," he said. "We pushed faster this year at the team trials than we did at the World Cup at Lake Placid last year. We pushed our driver, Nick Cunningham, to his fastest pushes ever on this track. We've made a lot of improvements from last year already, so we're pretty optimistic about this season.
"It's such a technical sport. It seems like you push this bobsled, everyone gets in and you ride down this track. But there's just so much to it, and so many little things that make you better to squeeze every hundredth of a second out of your run time."