Despite his efforts, the cost of attending a ski academy remained out of reach. Goepper's father eventually made a phone call to Miller, whom he'd been told would be a good person to contact. It turned out Miller already had heard quite a bit about Goepper from various sources of his own. During a two-week "audition" that began at an Ohio Dreams camp in September 2009, Miller watched Goepper hit water ramps, met his family and vetted him with phone calls and background checks. Ultimately, Miller made Goepper a dream offer.

"I said, 'I'm going to change your life dramatically,'" Miller recounted. "'You're going to go with me, and I'm going to open a lot of doors and opportunities for you because I think you can do this. And all those people you see in ski videos and in magazines, within six or eight months they'll become your friends on a first-name basis.' Nick broke down and cried."

Said Goepper: "He made it possible for me to do something better with my skiing, which was pretty cool, because I didn't think that was ever going to happen."

Goepper broke through in January with a third-place finish at the Killington Dew Tour, after gaining a wild-card entry at the Breckenridge qualifier. He missed the Winter X slope contest by one spot (he was an alternate) but recently got into Euro X due to another athlete's injury. With a bevy of doubles and both-way spins in his arsenal -- his ideal four-jump line would include "an unnatural cork 9, a switch unnatural double rodeo 9, a double cork 12, to a switch double 10" -- Goepper is focused on maximizing his X debut.

"I think I've come further than a lot of other kids as far as the journey from being a park rat to a pro skier," Goepper said. "And I definitely sometimes sit back and realize that I worked hard to get here, and I deserve this. It's fulfilling to know that I'm doing what I'm doing now, versus what I could be doing in Cornfield Land, Ind."