The Mountains Are Calling, and They Must Go: Olympic Athletes to Watch in the College of Humanities
Thirty-one athletes with ties to the University of Utah are currently competing on Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics. In fact, the U ranks No. 1 among all U.S. colleges and universities represented at the Milano-Cortina Games.
Three of these esteemed U athletes are tied to the College of Humanities. Here we profile each of them currently competing in Italy.
The College extends a hearty congratulations to our students at the Olympics - we are rooting for all of U!
Current Students
University of Utah student Kyra Dossa grew up flying in the air as a gymnast and now as a skier, competing on the world’s biggest stage. She spent the first 16 years of her life training as a gymnast, winning a state championship in vault as a sophomore in high school. Dossa doesn’t only perform on the mat, but on the ski slopes as well, placing in some of the largest aerial skiing competitions in the world. It’s safe to say that Dossa is more than prepared to compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics, as a well-rounded multi-sport athlete.
She began skiing at age three at Boston Mills Ski Resort and was introduced to aerial skiing on a vacation to Park City. In 2024, Dossa finished eighth in her World Cup debut at Deer Valley in Park City, an impressive introduction to her career. Dossa is a top competitor on the international stage as well, finishing fourth at the World Cup season opener in Ruka, Finland in December. Now, she is making her Olympic debut, only three years into competitive aerial skiing.
On Dossa’s Instagram page she posted a montage of childhood skiing videos captioned, “OLYMPICS...Wow. I can’t
believe I’m writing this. I’ve dreamt of this since I was a little girl,” she wrote.
There’s no doubt that Dossa has left her mark on the U.S aerials landscape in her
short career thus far.
Communication major, Brianna “Bri” Schnorrbusch is competing at the 2026 Winter Olympics with the snowboarding team. Schnorrbusch grew up in Monroe Township, New Jersey and trained with the Gould Academy Competition Program in Maine. The Academy’s Snowboard Program Director Dustin Holzweiss, discussed the participation of Schnorrbusch and the other two Gould Academy alumni in the Winter Olympics, “Their drive and determination at the end of the day is what gets them to where they want to be,” he said. “We try and we hope to foster this love of snowboarding as they grow and allow them to take it as far as they want to take it.”
Schnorrbusch’s career picked up when she won a silver medal at the 2022 FIS Junior Snowboard World Championships in Switzerland;, from then on, she rose in the national ranks. A year later she advanced from the rookie team to the U.S. Snowboard Cross Pro Team and made her senior world championships debut at the 2023 FIS Snowboard World Championships in Bakuriani, Georgia. There, she made history by competing in the same event as her sister, Ty.
In the 2024-25 season, she earned her second FIS Snowboard World Championship selection
for the 2025 FIS Snowboard World Championships in Switzerland. At the Junior World
Championships in 2025, she teamed up with Nathan Pare, another alumnus of Gould Academy,
to win the bronze medal in the mixed team event. Schnorrbusch has proven her ability
to excel in high-pressure competition and adapt to an international setting.
Schnorrbusch has made time for some fun in Italy as well – she and other athletes were photographed at the Team USA Welcome Experience, snatching a selfie with Snoop Dogg.
Alumni
17 years ago, Sean FitzSimons fell in love with snowboarding as a child; now he is representing the United States at the 2026 Winter Olympics. He learned to ski with his family when he was just two years old, on the slopes of Mt. Hood in Oregon. These family ski days involved FitzSimons and his brother, Tucker, staying from open to close while pushing each other to try out new tricks on the mountain. At age five, he began skateboarding, paving the way for him to eventually pick up snowboarding at age eight.
He began riding in contests at age nine and after years of practice and discipline, joined the Snowboard Pro Team in 2019. In 2022, he won his first World Cup victory at the Laax Open in Graubünden, Switzerland, securing his spot in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Bejing. There, he qualified for the slopestyle final and finished 12th. FitzSimons spent 2024 battling a broken pelvis, but once recovered, he qualified for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on the Men’s Halfpipe Snowboard.
FitzSimons is no stranger to performing on a large stage. He is handling the Olympics
by, “treating it like every other contest,” he says. He competed on February 5 in the snowboard big air qualifier, placing 25th. His Hood
River community has rallied around him during this exciting time, with local shops
even displaying his accomplishments in their windows. FitzSimons makes his Oregon pride apparent, saying, “Shoutout Oregon. I better see that in the article.” When he is
not competing, FitzSimons focuses on filming projects about skateboarding and snowboarding,
blending his passions together.