By: Rich Fisher
Aaron Gittleman just wanted to have fun.
In doing so, he’s finding out how good he really is in the luge.
Yes, the luge. Not what the kind of sport you would expect a Crossroads South 7th-grader to be excelling in. Maybe a kid in upstate New York, or New England, or Colorado.
But South Brunswick?
"Half the kids in my school don’t even know what the luge is,"Gittleman said. "But they think this is pretty cool. They all think I’m going to the Olympics."
Gittleman himself harbors no such dreams, but certainly has proven himself adept at the sport. The 12-year-old leaves Sunday for a week in Lake Placid, N.Y., to continue his trek in what is known as the Verizon-USA Luge Slider Search.
Incorporated by USA Luge in 1985, this is a grass roots program to identify, train and qualify young athletes for the USA Luge Junior Development Team. That is the first step of a six-rung ladder that leads to the National Select team and a possible chance to compete in the Olympics.
"This is our official athlete recruitment tour," said Jon Lundin, Marketing and Public Relations Director of USA Luge. "Every year we see more than 1,000 athletes from ages 10 to 14, and this year we invited over 100 athletes to our screening camp."
Gittleman was one of those 100, though he is not thinking in terms of the Olympics just yet.
"I came into this thinking it was just a whole bunch of fun," the Kingston resident said. "And I’m thinking it’s great just to get this far."
The journey started in Philadelphia last June. After trying the bobsled during a family vacation in Lake Placid last winter, Gittleman enjoyed it enough to sign up for the Slider Search clinic in Philadelphia. Similar clinics were held throughout the country, in which the attendees learned how to operate a luge, then went down a luge sled on wheels.
"They block off a road and tell you how to do the thing, how to work it, then send you down the hill a couple of times," Gittleman said. "I caught on pretty quickly to that."
The top 100 who showed promise in the summer programs were invited to Lake Placid, N.Y., Park City, Utah or Marquette, Mich. to try luge on ice at a USA Luge training complex in the second week of January. Gittleman was one of those chosen, and went to the Olympic Training Complex in Lake Placid. He was impressive enough to be invited back again next week, as USA Luge continues to whittle its search for Junior Development Team members.
"They’ve narrowed it down to 20 kids, and they’ll take five kids onto the actual development team," Gittleman said. "There are already kids on the development team that they’ll have to cut. It’s a complicated thing. There’s so many things you have to go through."
Gittleman is subscribing to the old adage that one should enjoy the journey rather than worry about the destination.
"It was great the first time in Lake Placid," he said. "I just had fun having the experience of actually going down on the sled. I’m not expecting to move up and go to the Olympics, I’m just having a lot of fun on the sled."
For those unfamiliar with the luge, a sport the U.S. has made great inroads with in recent Olympics, the competitor lies on his back and heads down the hill at breakneck speeds.
"You have to stay as perfectly low to the ground as you can," Gittleman said. "You don’t want anything sticking out. You have to be streamlined. You steer with your feet. Staying close to the ground is the toughest part."
Although Gittleman has no great aspirations about embarking on a luge career, the possibility is still there he may be chosen for the development team. If that happens, he would have a choice to make.
"I’m hearing that it takes a lot of time from school and you’d have to make up a lot of work," he said. "It would be a tough decision. It would be amazing though, to actually move on with this."
If not, it’s still a lot of fun.

