The first ride down the icy skeleton track for Biancha Emery was certainly inauspicious.

The young teenager from Bend was making her debut attempt at a head-first slide on a sled with no steering mechanism.

It left her bloody and bruised, and leery of trying again.

“I didn’t like it at the beginning,” Emery said.

Now she will be taking on the world’s best youth competitors as the only girl on the three-member United States skeleton team in the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics in Gangwon, South Korea, Jan. 19 through Feb. 1.

“When I started it, I thought it was just going to be a one-time thing,” said Emery, 16 and a sophomore at Caldera High. “I never thought I would be here qualifying for the (Youth) Olympic Games.”

Even her father, Steven Emery — who was on the 1983-84 U.S. World Cup Bobsledding Team — never anticipated this trajectory when he introduced her to skeleton just two years ago.

“There was no vision or dream of this happening,” Steven Emery said.

On Jan. 17, Biancha Emery will make her way to Gangwon with the U.S. Olympic Youth Team. The opening ceremony is set for Jan. 19 and she will have four days to train before competing on Jan. 22.

“I’m really looking forward to the experience and meeting new people from around the world,” Biancha Emery said.

Skeleton is a winter sport in which the rider gets a running start then dives head-first down a frozen track on a tiny sled and uses their knees and shoulders to help steer down the windy track at high speeds.

Unlike the other sliding sports of bobsleigh and luge, skeleton always involves single riders. According to olympics.com, the skeleton sled is thinner and heavier than the luge sled, and skeleton gives the rider more precise control of the sled. Skeleton is the slowest of the three sliding sports, as the face-down, head-first riding position is less aerodynamic than luge’s face-up, feet-first position.

To secure a spot in the Youth Olympics, Emery had to place in the top 18 of the world rankings. She is currently ranked 15th in the world by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation.

Over the past year, Emery has been splitting her time between Bend; Park City, Utah; and Lake Placid, New York to train while traveling around the world competing and hoping to land on the Youth Olympic Team.

She competed in a 10-month qualifying series that took her to Lake Placid; Innsbruck, Austria; Pyeongchang, South Korea; and Lillehammer, Norway. After racing in Pyeongchang in November, she qualified for a spot in Gangwon.

“I had 12 qualifying races,” Emery said. “It is nice to finally be qualified and not have to do any more races.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic when high school sports in Oregon were postponed in 2020 and part of 2021, the Emery family moved to Utah, where the restrictions on sports were much more relaxed.

It was then that Emery first tried skeleton. After her shaky start, soon thereafter she was reaching speeds near 80 mph and setting herself on a path toward the Winter Youth Olympic Games.

“I get a little nervous at the start of races,” Emery said. “I try to clear my mind and focus on my focus points. I am definitely nervous at the start, especially after a crash.”

In a short time, it became evident that Emery had a knack for the sport and could excel on the international stage.

“She is a natural driver,” Steven Emery said. “She drives the sled really well.”