These Pennsylvania athletes may just end up on the podium at this year’s Winter Olympics.
Team USA will send its largest delegation ever to the Winter Olympics this year, with more than 230 U.S. athletes headed to northeastern Italy’s Milan and Cortina for the games, commonly known as Milano Cortina 2026.
Among them are competitors with ties to Pennsylvania—athletes that you can watch spin on skates, fire off hockey goals, and sled down icy tracks at incredible speeds. From Olympians who grew up training in Pennsylvania winters to those who discovered their sport later in life, these Team USA athletes represent communities across the state.
The games take place between Feb. 6 and 22 and will air on NBC and stream on Peacock.
Taylor Anderson-Heide
Curling
Philadelphia
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Delaware County’s Broomall, just outside of the city, Taylor Anderson-Heide grew up curling with her twin sister, Sarah, at the Philadelphia Curling Club. Her journey to Milano Cortina included playing on a team without her sister for the first time, she told the Delaware County Daily Times, but competing in the Olympics has been a dream for most of her life. Happily, her sister—and the rest of Anderson-Heide’s family—will be traveling to Italy to cheer her on.
Dan Barefoot
Skeleton
Johnstown (Cambria County)
Unlike many Olympic athletes, Johnstown-area local Dan Barefoot didn’t start training in his sport of choice when he was a toddler. Instead, less than 10 years ago, when Barefoot was in his mid-20s, he searched online for Olympic sports that older, rookie athletes could pursue. Google presented him with skeleton, a winter sport in which a person rides a small sled headfirst down an icy track.
And rather than chuckling and moving on, the Penn State graduate actually started training in the sport—and was soon competing on the national and world stages. Milano Cortina will be Barefoot’s first Olympic Games.
“I stepped into an unknown, destabilizing a comfortable job in my field of study to try sliding headfirst down a mountain,” he wrote on his Instagram when announcing he’d been named to Team USA.
Summer Britcher
Luge
Glen Rock (York County)
Summer Britcher grew up in York County’s Glen Rock and got started in luge—a winter sport in which athletes ride a sled face up and feet first down a frozen incline—in 2006 at what is now Liberty Mountain Resort. Milano Cortina will be Britcher’s fourth Winter Olympics. While she has yet to medal at the Olympics, she has seven World Cup victories, giving her the most wins of any singles slider in the history of USA Luge.
Andrew Heo
Speedskating
Warrington (Bucks County)
Andrew Heo is an Olympic speed skater originally from Bucks County’s Warrington. He started as a kid after his brother and cousins began taking speedskating lessons. “Everyone kept telling me to try it and I really didn’t want to,” he told PhillyVoice, describing how his 6-year-old self preferred playing video games to the intense training he saw his brother do. “Eventually, just to shut them up, I tried it,” he said, recalling his foray into the sport.
And now, Milano Cortina will be Heo’s second Winter Olympics.
Tessa Janecke
Ice hockey
Penn State
Tessa Janecke is originally from Illinois but moved to Pennsylvania to go to college at Penn State, where she is now a senior and plays for the university’s hockey team as a forward. Janecke grew up playing hockey and lettered in the sport in high school. When she was just a high school freshman, Janecke verbally committed to Penn State. The university—in addition to a handful of other colleges—began working to recruit her before she even started high school. Unsurprisingly, her first season at Penn State saw her named the Women’s College Hockey National Rookie of the Year.
Jasmine Jones
Bobsled
Greensburg (Westmoreland County)
Jasmine Jones is a native of Westmoreland County’s Greensburg, as well as a mom, a member of the U.S. Air Force, and an Olympic athlete. Jones will compete at Milano Cortina as part of Team USA’s two-woman bobsled team. Her role is the brakeman—she pushes the bobsled hard at the start of the race and is responsible for pulling the brakes at the end.
Jones’ speed contributes to her success: She was a track and field star at Greensburg’s Hempfield Area High School, as well as at Eastern Michigan University. She started in bobsled during her senior year at Eastern Michigan and made the American national team the following year.
Isabeau Levito
Figure skating
Philadelphia
Figure skater Isabeau Levito was born in Philadelphia and grew up skating in the South Jersey suburbs. As she is just 18 years old, Milano Cortina will be Levito’s first Olympics. But even at 18, she has already won medals at figure skating’s World Championship, Grand Prix, and U.S. Championship. In fact, Levito was the U.S. national champion in 2023, taking home the gold medal for women’s figure skating.
At the Olympics this year, the figure skating portion, as well as most of the ice sports, will take place in Milan, Levito’s mother’s hometown.
Ava McNaughton
Ice hockey
Seven Fields (Butler County)
A native of Butler County’s Seven Fields, Ava McNaughton grew up playing hockey in the Pittsburgh area and distinctly remembers watching the sport during the 2010 Winter Olympics, when she was just a kid. She “wanted to be just like them,” she wrote on her Instagram when announcing she would be part of Team USA at Milano Cortina.
This year’s games will be the first Winter Olympics for the goalie, who currently plays for the University of Wisconsin.
Vincent Trocheck
Ice hockey
Pittsburgh
Vincent Trocheck is originally from the Pittsburgh area’s Upper St. Clair, has two kids, and currently plays in the National Hockey League as a center for the New York Rangers. He’s known in the league for his stellar faceoff goal record, and he played in the most recent NHL All-Star Game. Milano Cortina will be the first Olympic appearance for Trocheck, who is of Italian descent, though his ties are to southwestern Italy rather than Milan and Cortina’s northeastern Italy.
