In less than a year, a Shawnee Mission East graduate has gone from training in Arizona to becoming a bobsled athlete for Team USA.
It’s not a path the one-time all-state prep football standout had in mind when he graduated from SM East in 2018.
Last June, Milton Braasch II, 24, was looking for a new challenge. Though he had no prior experience with the sport, he submitted his athletic statistics as a football player and videos to USA Bobsled-Skeleton, the governing body of Team USA.
That scored him an invite to train with the team in January, and he eventually earned a spot as a brakeman on the squad.
“It’s a whirlwind of a year so far. And it’s only May,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d start the year at a bobsledder. But now, I made it and got to just keep improving.”
Braasch was a decorated football player in high school
Bobsled athletes on Team USA come from a variety of different areas and athletic backgrounds, like track & field and football. The important thing is that they’re fast, powerful and can work together.
“It’s people that kind of come from all over,” Braasch said. “I’m from Arizona and Kansas. There’s people from Nebraska. There’s people from the southeast and northeast. It’s an interesting kind of competitive environment to get into, as long as you can take a little bit of cold weather.”
Playing for the Shawnee Mission East Lancers football team in high school, Braasch racked up accolades and records, including two all-state honors, a Sunflower League MVP and setting school records for career and season rushing yards and career rushing touchdowns.
After graduating high school, he took his talents to Colgate University, making All-Patriot League First Team and Academic All-League honors in his senior year as team captain.
Moving to Arizona after graduating college, Braasch kept training for his then-unknown next step in his athletic career. After submitting his stats to Team USA, he waited six months before they extended an invitation for him to join their rookie camp at their headquarters in Lake Placid, New York.
“It was crazy,” he said.
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Team USA goes beyond the Olympics
Throughout the year, Team USA’s bobsled team trains in Lake Placid and competes in races around the world. The most outstanding among them get chosen to represent the U.S. in the Winter Olympics.
As a brakeman, Braasch pushes the bobsled as hard as he possibly can at the start of the race for about 5 seconds. After that, he loads into the rear of the sled and helps add weight for the ride down.
To make sure he’s in the best shape for the role, Braasch said there’s a strong focus on plyometric exercises, like jump training, as well as sprinting and weightlifting.
“You train partially like a track athlete because you know speed is so important,” he said.
“But you also need to have the strength and the weight to, one, be able to move the sled out of the hole (to) get it going. And then also, it helps to be heavy, to bring more weight down the track and pick up more momentum and speed by the end of it.”
“The scariest, most exhilarating thing”
Beyond being in peak physical shape, Braasch said there’s also mental fortitude that needs to be built up to be able to help guide a sled that can go up to 93 miles per hour.
“It is the scariest, most exhilarating thing I think anyone can ever do,” he said. “There’s no seatbelts. There’s a little bit of a seat, but really, it’s really trusting your driver.”
If Braasch has any jitters, it’s not showing in his work with Team USA. In March, he closed out his first season at the US National Championships, with his team placing fifth.
Currently in the offseason, Braasch said the goal is to continue to sharpen his skills.
“The long-term hope will be one day to be representing the USA at the Olympic Games,” he said. “I’m a couple of months into this. So that’s, obviously, the long-term goal. There’s things that need to be accomplished before then, milestones with the team and making progress internally first.”
Braasch is proud to represent Johnson County
Being a bobsledder from Kansas is just as much of a surprise to Braasch as it is to others.
“Just knowing kind of where it started — I never would have picked, growing up in Johnson County, that I would be bobsledding,” he said.
Wearing the stars and stripes means a lot to Braasch and he hopes to use his time with the team to inspire others.
“You don’t have to grow up in a super cold winter environment to have an opportunity like that,” he said. “If you can get the drive and the means to get there athletically, then they’ll find you and if you perform, they’ll give you a shot.”
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