Megan Roberts, right, of Farmington won gold medals in the Arizona Senior Olympics last week. She is pictured with an organizer, Linda, no last name available. Submitted photo
Don’t slow down. Keep moving.
If you see an opportunity, grab it and go.
That’s what Megan Roberts did when she saw a notice about the Arizona Senior Olympics.
“I thought, ‘That looks cool,'” she said in a recent telephone interview.
She had never competed in the Senior Olympics and wondered whether she was good enough.
Turns out, she was.
Roberts last week took first place in the slalom, even beating the men, and second overall in the giant slalom, losing to a man in his 50s.
“I still ski pretty hard,” she said. “I can still do those turns.”
The Farmington native and resident, 64, began skiing at Titcomb Mountain, the local ski hill, when she was 5. She loved everything about it. Riding the rope tow with friends, exploring the woods trails, hamburgers off the grill in the lodge.
Those experiences set her on a path for life.
She competed on the Mount Blue High School ski team and became a Division I racer at Plymouth State College in New Hampshire.
After college, she coached and taught in the Breckenridge, Colorado, race program before returning to Maine, where she worked for the Snow Bowl Race Program in Camden. She was inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame in 2016.
In 2000, she became the first female general manager at Titcomb Mountain. After four years, she left to help start the Ski Museum of Maine in Farmington. It has since moved to Kingfield. She returned to Titcomb in 2013 for another four years.
Then it was time for new adventures. Roberts turned to writing.
Her book “Titcomb, a Mountain of Ski Memories” won the 2019 International Ski History Association’s Skade Award. The award is presented for “an outstanding work on regional ski history or for an outstanding work published in book form that is focused in part on ski history.”
A writing job took her to California this year, but the person who hired her got sick and the project was canceled. She decided, on a whim, to spend the season in Flagstaff, Ariz.
To ski.
She credits her father, the late Gwilym Roberts — a longtime history professor at the University of Maine at Farmington — for her energy and positive outlook.
“My father was always doing stuff. He had a lot of energy,” she said. “I also got the curiosity and travel gene. I love to go to new places and plop down and get a job. I think you need to just keep going and not sit around.”
A healthful lifestyle keeps her fit: hiking, biking, walking, yoga. She has been a yoga instructor, too.
Next up: Returning to Farmington and working on two books, both history-related.
Her advice to seniors is to keep evolving.
“There are more opportunities than ever for us,” she said. “Research them and find them and do them. Keep your eyes open and when something grabs you, do it.”
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