Sho Kashima may have been born in El Paso, but he is clearly more comfortable in ski boots than cowboy boots.

The 23-year-old is vying for a spot on the U.S. mogul team.

Home resort: Heavenly Mountain Resort

Sho Kashima

Why did you choose this resort?: I moved to Tahoe when I was 4, and Heavenly was right in my backyard. My dad had a job there, and that’s why we moved to Tahoe. Heavenly has been really supportive throughout my career on the U.S. Ski Team.

How often are you in Lake Tahoe?: 6-8 times a year now because of competitions/training.

When you aren’t training and competing where can we find you and what would you be doing?: There’s not much downtime, I feel like I’m always going. I’ll rarely have time to myself when I’m not doing anything. I like playing Xbox if I have nothing else going on.

After you win gold in Vancouver, what is your next goal? Hopefully, that’s the case! I’m actually not sure what I’ll be doing in the future. I’d like to finish up school and hopefully some opportunities open up so I can have a nice career after my career in skiing.

How long have you been participating in your sport? I’ve been skiing since I was 4 years old. I started skiing competitively in moguls when I was 11.

Who inspires you most and why? My family and friends. They give me so much support, and I’d love to make them proud by having a lot of success. I owe my community so much, they’ve been awesome.

Your life is devoted to an event that is over in minutes, how do you prepare for that thrill of victory or agony of defeat? It’s hard to think about. I know my event is over in about 20 seconds, but I’ve been training most of my life to be where I am now. I’m really only prepared for the thrill of victory in my head, I never want to be prepared to fail. All I can do is keep training and competing hard, and ski my best runs, and keep improving my skiing no matter what I’m ranked in the world. Even if I become the best skier in the world, I will have room to improve somewhere.

Anything else you would like to add? My twitter: shotime2010, I usually update that once a day.