“You, and you alone, are in charge of your personal safety and performance.” With these words,  Suz Graham introduced SafeStart’s 24/7 personal safety skills to over 200 high school students at Argyle Secondary on April 7 in North Vancouver.

As a professional skier, action sports athlete and member of SafeStart’s Education and Athletics team, Suz knows firsthand that the decisions she makes are critical to her success. By learning to recognize the states she is in and the hazards around her, Suz is able to keep her eyes and mind focused on what she is doing. In her presentation to the secondary school students, she used her own experiences to communicate this message and to make the SafeStart material easily relatable.

Suz also addressed complacency and how we rarely get hurt doing the most dangerous things.  Breaking down one of her own injuries, Suz encouraged the students to analyze her injury and get an idea of how the SafeStart concepts can help them prevent similar errors and performance mistakes in their own life.

Suz ended her presentation by reminding students that the purpose of learning SafeStart’s 24/7 personal safety program isn’t to tell students what to do, but rather to help students accomplish their goals by using these tools to keep them safe and perform at their peak in all situations.