BLOOMFIELD HILLS — Madison Karakashian was laying in the snow at the base of a Chilean mountain, trying to process what had just happened.
“Right away, I couldn’t get up, and my entire leg was in extreme pain that I couldn’t really pinpoint,” she recalled.
Coming off a year that the Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart student was a skiing state finals qualifier, Karakashian was training in Chile in July 2024 (which is winter in the Southern Hemisphere). During a giant slalom practice run, one of her skis dislodged, which sent her careening down the hill. When she came to a rest at the bottom of the slope, she needed immediate medical attention.
“I was taken off the hill in a sled to a small clinic at the mountain,” the Bloomfield Hills resident said. “They had to cut my gear off, and when they took my boot off to do an X-ray, it was obvious my leg was broken just from the way it was bent.”
Making the experience even scarier, she was in a foreign country, without her family beside her.
“All of the doctors spoke Spanish, so they actually used Google Translate to explain to me that my leg was broken,” Karakashian said. “I had fractured both my tibia and fibula in my right leg and needed surgery as soon as possible.”
Doctors put Karakashian in a full leg cast up to her hip and medicated her so she could make the 17-hour flight back home.
Once back in Michigan, Karakashian had a metal rod and screws inserted into her leg and was on bed rest for a couple of weeks. Although the active teenager was eager to start physical therapy, she received some bad news: no sports of any kind for eight months. It would be 10 months she would be allowed to get back on the slopes.
“It was a long, slow process that required a lot of patience, which was honestly hard for me,” she said. “Throughout all of that, I leaned on my faith and trusted that God had a plan for me, even when I didn’t fully understand why this was happening.”
While sidelined, Karakashian gained a new perspective. Although she couldn’t compete at that point, it didn’t keep her away from her Sacred Heart teams. For her junior year cross-country and ski seasons, she still showed up at meets to help time, pace, assist with starting, serve as gate judge, or just show support as a team captain.
“It made me realize how much I truly love playing sports, being part of a team, and especially skiing,” she said. “Having that taken away, even temporarily, made me appreciate it so much more. I found myself praying a lot about gratitude — especially for my health and the fact that I would be able to walk and run again. It made me recognize how much I had taken those things for granted before.”
Doing so also gave Karakashian a chance to “slow down and really focus on my relationships and my support system.”
While she was recovering, Karakashian also had a chance to channel her competitive energy down a completely different path.
“Because I had a lot of extra time on my hands not playing sports, a few of my friends and I decided to start an FRC robotics team, and I think coming from an all-girls small school, it just really helps bring forth that women in STEM aspect,” she said. “I didn’t even really know how to use a drill beforehand, so coming in and building a whole robot was really challenging, but it definitely inspired me and I realized that there’s other career paths for me. Just being one of the ringleaders of that was pretty impactful.”
The fledging team received the “rookie all-star award” and was lauded for its outreach project with Center for Success Pontiac.
“Our school’s mission with them was to help bring STEM to people who didn’t have the opportunity that some higher-income people do, so we were trying to bring them middle-school level and elementary-school level robotics,” she explained. “We wanted to have the kids come to our competitions and get excited about using their math and science skills in different areas.”
All the while, Karakashian’s physical condition steadily improved. While she still loved to ski, she had some hesitations about getting back to the sport. She sought mental coaching to process the trauma from the accident, and overcome the fear and nervousness of returning to the slopes.
“I came into the season with really high expectations for myself, but I ended up learning something more important: how to give myself grace,” she said. “I realized that focusing on enjoying skiing and having fun again was way more fulfilling than just chasing a certain performance standard.”
It all paid off this winter. Not only did Karakashian qualify for the state finals again — she finished 17th in the slalom and tied for 18th in the giant slalom — she’s even prouder that she helped Sacred Heart’s co-op team win its first Catholic League championship in the sport, ending Bloomfield Hills Marian’s title streak at four.
Drawing upon her experiences also helped Karakashian earn a Michigan High School Scholar-Athlete Award, becoming one of just 32 students statewide to do so (and one of four from Class D schools, Sacred Heart’s classification). Part of the application process was to write a 500-word essay about the importance of sportsmanship in high school athletics. Naturally, Karakashian’s essay drew upon her skiing career.
The lone Catholic High School League student to win the award this academic year, Karakashian and her family attended the MHSAA Scholar-Athlete Award Scholarship banquet March 14 at Michigan State University. The winners were then honored on court during the boys state basketball championships.
Not only was Karakashian the recipient of a $2,000 college scholarship, sponsored by Farm Bureau Insurance, but the ways she’s overcome the challenges of the past two years are helping shape her path at the University of Michigan next fall.
“All my life I’ve wanted to be a doctor, and after my injury and robotics, I realized my skills and interests are in building things, creating things and innovating new ideas,” she said. “I can blend those ideas together in biomedical engineering.”
While she stopped short of calling her accident a lucky break, Karakashian says it was “a blessing in disguise” and has since opened her eyes to a bigger picture.
“I try to bring my worries into prayer instead of holding on to them myself,” she said. “It helps me feel like I’m not carrying everything alone, and reminds me that there’s a bigger plan for my life. I really believe that everything I go through, even the challenges, happen for a reason, and that helps shape me into a stronger and more grounded person.”
