All images: Courtesy of Kosak / Skiers: Reese Chapdelaine (left) Ava Keenan (center) Nash Lucas (right)
As part of our job at FREESKIER, we’re always on the lookout for the next great talent in skiing and Ava Keenan is a name we are putting on our list to keep tabs on in the coming years. Born and raised in in Westminster, Colorado Ava has been skiing Vail since she was two and moved up to the mountain town with her family in 2020 to ski full time and go to Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy. At just 14 years old, Ava is the three-time Jr. National Champion in moguls, a Warren Miller film star, podcast host and most recently, ski outerwear designer.
If that resume is making you feel like you should be doing more, you’re not the only one. As the first ever black skier to win a sanctioned Rocky Mountain Freestyle Competition, Keenan has her goals set on landing a cork 720 in competition this year and becoming the first black skier to win an Olympic medal in her discipline.
In an interview with Warren Miller, Keenan credits her dad with being her biggest supporter and source of inspiration. “He’s always telling us one more run. One more rep. One more training day,” says Keenan in the Q&A. “He taught me about the power of a growth mindset and how focusing on getting better at a skill is far more important than focusing on a goal like winning or awards.”

A dynamic duo in the Vail Valley, Keenan and her dad noticed freestyle skiing’s outerwear going stale in the bumps, park, pipe and even big-mountain. In true Keenan family fashion, Ava and her dad took it upon themselves to develop their own line of freestyle pants and jackets, dubbed Kosak. Inspired by the classic ski trick, Kosak claims to put the “style” back in freestyle skiing, and offers mogul and park skiers fresh drip with freestyle heritage sewn in.
The Original Pants feature the classic knee patches we’ve come to know and love on mogul pants, but an argyle pattern along the sides of the pant legs and Ava’s signature smiley face make this pant a Kosak signature. Available in a variety of colors, the “OG” pants are designed to be extra baggy in the thighs and knees and taper in at the waist, feature a 10K waterproof and breathability rating, 40 grams of insulation, leg vents, durable kick patches on the cuffs and oversized zippered cargo pockets. To complete the kit, Kosak offers the Original Jacket, which features the same signature design touches as the pants, as well as a 10K waterproof and breathability rating, 40 grams of insulation and corresponding colorways to mix and match with the pants.

It’s not everyday we get to write about ski outerwear designed by a teenager, but then again, Ava Keenan is no average 14-year-old. The youngest person to qualify for the NorAm Tour, Keenan is still on her come up and we’ll be cheering on this Vail Ski and Snowboard athlete as she continues to rise like the star she is—decked out in Kosak Originals.