Amy Wotovich is the founder and CEO of Back the Team — a mentorship platform connecting young athletes to Olympic and Paralympic role models.
The program launched in September. Wotovich said her experience as a springboard diver inspired her to start the initiative.
"Diving is quite a scary sport when you're standing on the edge of a platform 33 feet in the air, looking down and knowing that there's only one way down,” she said.
But the sport helped her find confidence in competition, overcome fear and set goals — all things embedded in the Back the Team program.
In partnership with U.S. National Governing Bodies, athletic directors and coaches, the program features cohorts with a different Olympian or Paralympian each month.
With the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games coming up in February, the mentors are winter sports athletes. Each week, they meet virtually with their mentees.
“Young athletes across the country have this really unique opportunity to feel like and know that an athlete that they'll soon be cheering for in Milan is personally invested in their success, knows them by name and is sharing all of these lessons and stories that they've learned over the course of their career,” Wotovich said.
The live sessions are then supplemented with daily challenges to reiterate key themes of mental toughness, overcoming setbacks and goal setting. Diligent mentees can also earn the chance to meet their mentors by being top of their cohort in terms of engagement.
Park City-based mogul Olympian Nick Page kicked off the first cohort in September. He also hosted the first “Train with Me” session Nov. 8 with his most diligent student, Oliver Lacey, at the USANA Center of Excellence in Park City.
A Bozeman, Montana, native, Lacey said the highlight of the program was learning from Page and seeing how he prepares for tournaments.
“He has a very strategic way of thinking, especially for mogul skiing,” he said in a promotional video. “I've learned so much.”
Mentees pay $150 per month to participate. But Wotovich said much of the fee goes back to the Olympic and Paralympic mentors — that’s how the program got the name Back the Team.
Alina Müller, an Olympic gold medalist in women’s hockey and an NCAA record-breaker, as well as Park City’s Zach Miller, a Paralympic snowboarder and two-time world champion, are the next mentors in the program.
