Original Publish Date/Outlet: August 28, 2026 | Minnesota Star Tribune
Taylor Voigt’s approach to her last Alpine skiing season at Hill-Murray lacked pressure. She avoided angst. Voigt had won four state titles, two in the individual category, and her only goal this time around was joy.
Voigt, like former Mahtomedi High pitcher Alex Kurpis and Maple Grove High soccer player Frank Miller, made her senior year her final year. For different reasons, they made the tough decision to step away from competition.
After years of daily, six-hour practices, months of training in Colorado, and the pressure to continue bringing home the hardware, Voigt was ready to hang up her skis. She sometimes spent no more than three days a month in a traditional classroom.
Those things, paired with disinterest in competing beyond high school, led to burnout her junior year.
“I was kind of starting to get burnt out because it was a lot of training, a lot of races, and I didn’t have the drive I once did,” Voigt said.
During her junior year, Voigt, the 2025 All-Minnesota Girls Alpine Skier of the Year, and her parents decided club skiing wasn’t worth the stress without a collegiate goal.
Soccer was in Miller’s blood, but the demanding schedule also forced him to have tough conversations.
After strength training with the football team at 5 a.m., Miller would attend basketball workouts after school and two soccer practices before heading home.
Miller, the 2024 Star Tribune All-Minnesota Boys Soccer Player of the Year, is naturally competitive, and while grateful for friends and the opportunity to play on a travel team, he felt the club schedule consumed his life with little downtime — even as he helped Maple Grove reach the high school state tournament three years in a row.
Miller used a PowerPoint to explain to his mom why he wanted to quit club soccer. It was tough to tell his teammates and coaches, but the decision would let him focus on things he cared about.
“I never really fell in love with the game,” Miller said. “Just more like the camaraderie of the team and competing. That’s what I’m interested in. I really wasn’t in love with soccer.”
Kurpis had another purpose, one bigger than his two standout performances in the Class 3A state baseball tournament in June. His shutout start in the state championship game led Mahtomedi to their second-straight title.
Kurpis wanted to help people. His father works in the Oakdale Fire Department, which sparked his interest in firefighting.
Kurpis grew up playing on the diamond and the gridiron, but he was raised by a first responder.
“I think it’s pretty cool that I can be the person that’s running into the place that everyone’s running away from, and be there for someone on the worst day of their life, and just do everything that we can to help them out and prevent anything worse from happening,” Kurpis said.
Kurpis had reservations about the cost of college and continuing traditional education. Playing at the next level interested him, but becoming independent and remaining debt-free were more appealing.
He earned his EMT certification and said his family, coaches and teammates knew about his plans before the season began. His parents, who did attend college, supported his decision to follow in the footsteps of his father.
Miller made the deciding penalty kick against Champlin Park in the Class 3A, Section 5 championship, sending Maple Grove to the state tournament his senior year. He’d fought to convince doctors the day of the match to replace his sling with a cast.
“And the emotions were just insane,” Miller said. “I mean, like, my dad’s the announcer, my brothers are there…”
Kurpis finished on the mountaintop. He wasn’t a part of the varsity team during Mahtomedi’s 2025 championship, and being an integral part of the squad this year felt different.
“The emotions kind of hit and I realized that this is my last time,” Kurpis said. “But it went out the best way that it could have. So I was just really, really happy and sad at the same time.”
In February, Voigt led Hill-Murray to its second-straight Alpine team title and third overall. All she wanted in her final high school race was for it to be clean.
Voigt said it was an amazing way to not only end the season, but for her to retire.
“I saw all my family and my sister and my teammates,” Voigt said. “And they all hugged me and I was sad to be leaving them, but I was also so grateful for the way I finished.”
Kurpis will soon learn if he’d been accepted into the Mahtomedi Fire Department. The immediate goal is to make it through the program, but eventually he’d like to be a paramedic.Mahtomedi pitcher Alex Kurpis (12) throws a pitch against Mankato West in the top of the seventh inning during a Class 3A baseball state semifinal game on June 12, 2026 at Chaska Athletic Park. (Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Miller and Voigt chose to attend college. Miller is a sophomore at the University of Minnesota studying accounting and finance. He’ll race his first Ironman in September.
Voigt graduated from Hill-Murray in the spring and is starting her first semester at the University of St. Thomas this fall, studying nutrition and minoring in business. She took up yoga the summer before senior year and will be an instructor. One day, she wants to open a holistic health practice.
Though her competitive days are over, Voigt will put to use the lessons sports taught her.
“I feel like you should start to figure out how you can channel what you’ve learned through sports into a career and take the process and passions that you learned in sport and channel it into your life beyond that,” she said.