Keri Herman

One thing for sure about kids who grow up playing hockey – they have the balance of a cat when you place them on slippery surfaces. Fortunately for Monster Energy, freeskier Keri Herman decide to ditch the rink for the mountains and, in the process, parlayed that hockey-based balance into the landings on the world’s premier slopestyle jumps. Blasting turns at places like Lutsen and Buck Hill as a kid, the latter of which rises some several hundred feet above the lake-dotted Minnesota countryside, Herman no doubt gazed out of the University of Denver classrooms as a student and ultimately decided it’d be best to park her D1 academic degree in favor of her newfound skiing prowess – at least for the foreseeable future. Stomping the landing on the global comp radar in 2007, Herman won the New Zealand Freeski Open Slopestyle event, then followed that up stateside with a win in the Aspen Open (Colo.) Slopestyle in 2008. Numerous Winter X Games and World Winter X Games medals would follow and, running the M-claw logo, Herman’s been a key figure in advancing the sport of women’s slopestyle skiing.