Springfield College alum Kelly Curtis returns to Olympics as Team USA’s top-ranked skeleton athlete

The Springfield community saw a familiar face last week during the Opening Ceremony for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. Former Springfield College track and field star Kelly Curtis waved to fans with the rest of the U.S. skeleton contingent from downtown Cortina.

The 2012 graduate enters her second Olympics, first as a mom, ranked 16th in the world — the highest-ranked American on the World Cup Tour. Her entry this season gives her the honor as the first Springfield College alum to participate in multiple Winter Olympics.

As a part of the U.S. Air Force’s World Class Athlete Program since 2020, Curtis has lived and trained at the Aviano Air Base in Northeastern Italy since 2022, right before the Beijing Games. The base is just a couple hour drive south of where she will race for her country.

 “I’ve been setting everything up for these games,” Curtis said. “Since we moved out to Italy, I’ve met a lot of colleagues in the area who … ask me what I’m doing in Italy, I’m like, ‘Well, I’m training for these Milano Cortina Games.’”

Games she unlikely would be mentioning as a competitor without her time at Springfield and a nudge from her coaches.

After two seasons running at Tulane University, Curtis was looking to transfer for her junior and senior years.

Her family made it no mystery which school she should consider.

Her father, John, and brother, Jay, both played football at Springfield. John starred in the late 60’s, eventually selected by the New York Jets in the 1971 NFL Draft. Her uncle attended the school as well.

“ Growing up, I would go to a lot of Springfield College events, like homecoming reunions. When I transferred to Springfield, it almost felt like going home because it felt so familiar,” Curtis said.

So Curtis arrived at Springfield in the Fall of 2010 with her sights set on competing in multi-disciplinary events like the heptathlon, get a degree and eventually work as an athletic director.

Even with two football-playing relatives, Curtis was not to be outdone. She won the heptathlon at the 2011 Penn Relays, a dream of hers after growing up in nearby Princeton, New Jersey. She finished fourth in the event in the NCAA Division III Track & Field Championships and earned three NCAA All-American honors along the way.

The same year Kelly joined Springfield, another alum, Erin Pac, took home the bronze medal in the two-woman bobsled event in Vancouver.

The 2003 graduate also competed in the heptathlon, leading Springfield’s track and field coach Jim Pennington to see similarities in the two athletes.

“He just noticed the similarities,” recalled Curtis. “We’re both powerful, explosive, heptathletes that were not that good at the 800. So he was like, ‘Oh yeah, she did well in bobsled. You might be able to do well as well.’”

Additionally, SC strength and conditioning coach Dan Jaffe, who had competed in the skeleton in Lake Placid, made the same suggestion. It wasn’t until her time during graduate school at St. Lawrence University that she gave the sport serious consideration.

“I had just put it out on the back burner until I went to graduate school in upstate New York and it became a little more real,” Curtis said. “But at the time, I don’t know, it just seemed like a fun thing to talk about, but nothing to that was actually in the realm of pursuing.”

So around 2014, Curtis began training in the bobsled. Her Springfield coaches connected her with Pac to learn what to expect if she wanted to someday make it to the Olympics. The medal-winner told Curtis to be ready to give the next 8-12 years of her life if she wanted to get anywhere in the sport.

“ I was really grateful that she said that to me because the first couple of years, you don’t even know, at least for a skeleton slider, what you’re doing on the sled,” Curtis said. “You think you’re doing steers and you’re not. It usually takes about four years to get to really settle into the sled and understand how your body interacts with your sled and your equipment.”

After starting out in the bobsled, Curtis eventually gravitated toward the skeleton full-time. In the 2017-18 season, she earned a spot in the North American Cup, finishing first in the season rankings.

Four seasons later, in 2021, Curtis made her way to the top-level World Cup Tour, just in time for Olympic qualifying.

“ I was just trying to take it all in, and I had a good enough season where I could qualify for the games and that,” she said. “I qualified on the very last race, and it was just like a big sense of, I don’t wanna say shock, but like joy.”

A sixth-place finish at St. Moritz pushed Curtis above fellow American Megan Henry to qualify for the Beijing Games. There, Curtis became the first Black athlete to represent Team USA in skeleton. She finished 21st in the women’s skeleton race.

While she was glad to participate in 2022, Curtis’ focus on the Cortina Games didn’t go away. She knew she was far from done. After taking the 2023-24 season off following the birth of her daughter, Maeve, she returned the following season, still with her Olympic goals in mind.

While she was glad to be back on the sled, it wasn’t until the last two races she cracked the top 10.

“ I was pushing almost as fast, if not faster than, my pre-baby days,“ Curtis said. ”But just the mental part of trying to find a system where I feel OK with going off the sliding. Because the earlier postpartum days, I was still trying to figure out how to make it all work.”

Balancing motherhood and training, as well as military commitments, comes with its challenges (Curtis jokes that her family is a traveling circus when they travel), but Curtis has gotten support from her husband and the rest of her family to live out her goals. She struggles to put into words the best part of being a mother.

“ It’s hard to articulate,” Curtis said. “Definitely coming back after a long day, a short day, any type of day coming back and my daughter just running up and giving me a big hug.”

Not only does Curtis hope to improve from her last Olympics, she’s also looking to build off a 20th place finish at Cortina last November.

With the track in her backyard and her second time in the Olympics, the Games don’t overwhelm Curtis as much.

“ I’ve been coming up here the past few summers for the push track up here, and I come up here whenever I can, but this part of the world is so beautiful,” she said. “It’s like, OK, I thought I would get over coming up through the Dolomites, but I’m still just taken aback by the beauty of it. It is an Olympics that I’m gonna just savor in and soak in the whole time.”

With several Springfield alum in Italy to watch her race, Curtis is already prepared for someone to hand her a Springfield College flag at the bottom of the track after her run.

Women’s skeleton takes place this Friday and Saturday (Feb. 13-14), with four heats taking place across the two days. If Curtis qualifies as the top U.S. women, she will have a chance to win a second medal in the skeleton mixed team event on Sunday.