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Jared Orenstein

A couple of summers ago, Jared was a 12-year-old at Canyon Vista Middle School, when his mom took him, more or less on a whim, to an open tryout that USA Luge was holding in the 100-degree heat near Fort Worth. He went fast enough to get noticed (because he didn't want to scuff up his new sneakers slowing down, he has said) and got to try out a real sled in Lake Placid, N.Y. Things just began to … ahem … snowball from there: This past February, he won a gold medal at the National Luge Championships in Park City, Utah, and was one of only three males selected to train year-round at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. Now he's withdrawn from Canyon Vista, goes to school at the National Sports Academy, and, as a member of the USA Olympic Luge Junior Development Team, is training to win a spot in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.