{"id":24980,"date":"2019-06-06T20:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T02:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/kayak-champion-emily-jackson-returns-to-gopro-mountain-games-paying-childhood-lessons-forward\/"},"modified":"2019-06-06T20:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T02:24:00","slug":"kayak-champion-emily-jackson-returns-to-gopro-mountain-games-paying-childhood-lessons-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/kayak-champion-emily-jackson-returns-to-gopro-mountain-games-paying-childhood-lessons-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Kayak champion Emily Jackson returns to GoPro Mountain Games paying childhood lessons forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"swift-gallery\" readability=\"6.5625\">\n<ul id=\"imageGallery-367020-843\" class=\"gallery list-unstyled\">\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Special to the Daily | Pro kayaker Emily Jackson and her husband Nick Troutman have a unique approach to life, nature, the river and how to raise a family.\" class=\"h-100\" readability=\"-0.5\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"10\">\n<p><strong>Pro kayaker Emily Jackson and her husband Nick Troutman have a unique approach to life, nature, the river and how to raise a family.<\/strong><br \/>Special to the Daily<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1.jpg\" alt=\"Pro kayaker Emily Jackson and her husband Nick Troutman have a unique approach to life, nature, the river and how to raise a family.\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1-1-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1-1.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Special to the Daily | Rivers constantly change, which means Emily Jackson and her family are constantly on the move.\" class=\"h-100\" readability=\"-1\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"9\">\n<p><strong>Rivers constantly change, which means Emily Jackson and her family are constantly on the move.<\/strong><br \/>Special to the Daily<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"Rivers constantly change, which means Emily Jackson and her family are constantly on the move.\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1-2-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1-2.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Special to the Daily | The future is wide open for the Troutman family. Catch them in action at the GoPro Mountain Games.\" class=\"h-100\" readability=\"-1.5\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"8\">\n<p><strong>The future is wide open for the Troutman family. Catch them in action at the GoPro Mountain Games.<\/strong><br \/>Special to the Daily<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/06\/MountainGamesEmilyJackson-VDW-053119-1-2.jpg\" alt=\"The future is wide open for the Troutman family. Catch them in action at the GoPro Mountain Games.\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"caption-toggle\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/sports\/kayak-champion-emily-jackson-returns-to-gopro-mountain-games-paying-childhood-lessons-forward\/#\" class=\"show-captions\">Show Captions<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/sports\/kayak-champion-emily-jackson-returns-to-gopro-mountain-games-paying-childhood-lessons-forward\/#\" class=\"hide-captions\">Hide Captions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">VAIL \u2014 While packing up her family and the RV to hit the road and river for seven months, Emily Jackson would be the last person you\u2019d ever guess hated kayaking at some point in her life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">We are talking about a woman who willfully paddles in full-blown blizzards and who won the U.S. Freestyle Kayaking Championships when she was nine months pregnant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">As the daughter of whitewater pioneer and Jackson Kayak founder Eric Jackson, from early childhood, Emily faced a fair amount of pressure to excel at what was intrinsically considered the family sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cIt wasn\u2019t an option, ever. We went kayaking every day. It was always, \u2018this is what we\u2019re doing and you\u2019re doing it,\u2019\u201d Emily said. \u201cWhen I started getting to the age where my dad was meeting other kids who were kayaking a lot harder and better than I was, he was bummed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Emily believes her initial ill feelings toward kayaking, which ranged from resistant to outright loathing, had more to do with a need for control than actual dislike of the sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cMy dad was saying, \u2018you\u2019re running this river \u2026 it doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re crying the whole way there.\u2019 Rather than thinking about kayaking, I was just mad and upset, probably because I didn\u2019t have the control rather than that I wasn\u2019t enjoying kayaking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Growing up living in an RV with her younger brother and parents, who had sold their home in Betheseda, Maryland, along with their car and nearly all of their possessions in order to live a free and groundless, river-running lifestyle, Emily turned her attitude around one day when she was about 12. She decided, unbidden, to go out for a paddle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cIt was the middle of the winter in Rock Island, Tennessee. There isn\u2019t much to do. My mom tried to get us into judo classes and I wasn\u2019t into it. I longed to fit in somewhere. I was like, \u2018I\u2019m going kayaking today.\u2019 I told my dad, \u2018I want to go down to the flat water and work on my roll.\u2019 He said, \u2018OK, I\u2019ll get the truck.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Once on the river, Emily made it clear that she was running the show that day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cI said, \u2018Leave me be. I don\u2019t want you telling me what to do.\u2019 My brother and I played Simon Says for two and a half hours. We could do combat rolls before I knew it. When I took control over my own self-learning, that\u2019s when the passion grew.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And the rest, as evidenced by her trophy shelf of numerous world and national championship medals, is history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cI realized I loved kayaking and the aspect of competition. Friendly competition with my brother in the eddy there, on that day, pushed everything into the next stage,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">\u2018The whole experience\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Now at age 29, Emily is married to fellow pro kayaker Nick Troutman and has her own children \u2014 Tucker, 5, who she home schools and describes as \u201csensitive and always making a solid point about something,\u201d and Parker, 2, \u201calways naked with hair down to her butt and covered in bruises.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Considering her father\u2019s approach and her turbulent early days in a kayak, Emily is determined to allow free reign for Tucker and Parker \u2014 both of whom, of course, have their own boats \u2014 to organically develop warm feelings toward the sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cI try really hard to not have any expectations with them. One of the biggest turn downs for kids is the fear of disappointment, my son\u2019s fear of disappointing me in the kayak. I don\u2019t want it to be like it was for me when I was like, I\u2019m EJ\u2019s daughter, but I\u2019m so disappointing and I hate kayaking. We want him to see the other parts we love about kayaking \u2014 talking about ducks and other things in the water, the cool things we saw or did. There\u2019s so much more to kayaking than just kayaking. We want him to focus on the whole experience so he always looks back and says, \u2018it\u2019s really fun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">For Emily, it\u2019s the whole experience \u2014 the travel, the sights and sounds, the people along the way, the mentality and the lifestyle \u2014 that she hopes her kids embrace more than the sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cThe thing I love about kayaking the most is the places I get to go,\u201d Emily said. \u201cEven if they don\u2019t want to go kayaking, that\u2019s fine for me. I just hope they stay open to different lifestyles and communities and cultures. I hope they experience enough different ones to recognize there isn\u2019t a right way or a wrong way. That\u2019s all I really want for them. Some people can\u2019t figure out that most of your life should be spent on what makes you happy. The end goal is for your children to be happy. The only way I know to help them figure that out is to travel more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And off they go. During the Jacksons\u2019 seven-month, cross-continental RV tour, they will, as always, make what\u2019s sure to be a memorable stop at the GoPro Mountain Games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\">This story is from VailDaily.com.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/sports\/kayak-champion-emily-jackson-returns-to-gopro-mountain-games-paying-childhood-lessons-forward\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pro kayaker Emily Jackson and her husband Nick Troutman have a unique approach to life, nature, the river and how to raise a family.Special to the Daily Rivers constantly change, which means Emily Jackson and her family are constantly on the move.Special to the Daily The future is wide open for the Troutman family. Catch [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 18:28:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}