By: Chandler Tuten

The 2018 Winter Olympics will feature world class athletes from all over the world. They will meet in South Korea from February 9 – 25 and compete for gold, silver and bronze medals.  

  The opening ceremony will begin Feb 9 at 8pm and it will be held at Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium, which was specifically built for the games and can seat 35,000. It will be only be used for the opening and closing ceremonies.  Athletes will walk out in alphabetical order of their countries’ name, expect for South Korea who will be walking out last because they are the host country.  The opening ceremony will feature music and performances by South Korean people.

  In this year’s Winter Olympics, there will be four new events added by the Olympic Committee.  On the slopes, athletes can now compete in freestyle skiing and big air snowboarding. For athletes competing on the ice, there will be mass speed skating and mixed doubles curling.  

  As usual, the expectations are high for United States athletes. In the 2014 Winter Olympics, the United States came in third in the amount of gold medals with 9, but had the most total medals won out of all countries with 28.  Many star athletes from Team USA are returning to the Olympics from Soche. Some include Mikaela Shiffrin, who was the youngest to win a gold medal in slalom at 18; she will be looking to repeat gold medals this year. Lowell Bailey will be  representing Team USA at the Winter Olympics for the third time this year.  He will be attempting to achieve Team USA’s first-ever Olympic biathlon medal.  Finally, Erin Hamlin, a  three-time Olympian who won the Team USA its first ever medal for singles luge with her 2014 bronze, hopes to top that with a gold or silver medal.  

  Winter Olympians can compete in alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsledding, cross country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, Nordic combined, skeleton, ski jumping, snowboarding, and speed skating.

  Tuscarora juniors Luke Miller and Zane Quigley don’t have Olympic aspirations, but they have both developed a love for playing popular winter sports. Miller, who snowboards every weekend during the winter months, said, “I love learning new tricks, having fun and learning the culture of the sport.”

  Quigley, who started playing hockey even before he started school, is on the Tuscarora club hockey team. “I enjoy the sport of hockey because I have played it since I was three so it’s just a part of my life and it’s fun,” said Quigley. The Tuscarora club hockey team was combined with athletes from Heritage High School until this year, when they recruited enough students from Tuscarora to form their own team. They compete against club teams from other high schools in Loudoun County; their practices and games are held at the Ashburn Ice House. Their current record for this season is 1-5. For more information on upcoming games and scores, follow them on Twitter at @tusky_hockey.