McGregor, Texas is home of the bulldogs, SpaceX and a Winter Olympian.
"Mcgregor is a place I attribute my meathead side," four-time Olympian Katie Uhlaender said. "That's where I grew up as an athlete. I ran track I did power-lifting, volleyball, baseball, basketball and golf. I think Central Texas is an amazing place to participate in sports, and it gave me the foundation I have today."
She grew up wearing black and gold, but never imagined she’d be going for Olympic gold, four times.
"It’s kind of a whirlwind!" Uhlaender said. "I don’t have words to explain how crazy it is! It’s God’s will and I'm here and I'm going to put my best foot forward."
Katie is a World Champion, a two-time World Cup Champion and 11-time World Cup Gold Medalist in skeleton. It’s a winter sport pretty foreign to most of us in Central Texas.
Katie describes it as, "I push a 70 pound cookie sheet. I push it, jump on and cruise down an icy tube, and it's wicked fun."
Her former high school coaches, Jerry Lynch and Tim Seward, were shocked when she made the Winter Olympic team.
"It was astonishing because we didn’t know she was doing it," Seward said.
At first, they didn’t even know what skeleton was.
"I'll be honest with you, I had to look it up," admits Seward. "I'm pretty good about knowing about sports, and I knew it had something to do with going forward or backwards on a one man sled."
But now they say it fits Katie perfectly.
“It’s a risky event -- what I consider a risk," Uhlaender's former basketball coach Lynch said. "She's going head-first at 90 mph...no doesn't surprise me at all."
Her old coaches say her personality and drive made Katie stand out during her time at McGregor high.
"Everything Katie did, she does it 190 percent," Lynch said.
Her passion for life and sports is everywhere in the old high school yearbooks.
"She wanted to do everything," Seward remembers. "She was in one act plays, she wanted to do UIL, she was always active."
It was that spirit that encouraged Uhlaender to try skeleton out, all those years ago.
"This girl asked if I wanted to try skeleton and I did it and here we are four Olympics later," Uhlaender said.
Now, her motto and message for others growing up in a small town is this: “Put everything you have into whatever you’re doing and opportunities will present themselves.”
You can watch Katie Uhlaender compete next week in women's skeleton. Many of her friends and fans from McGregor will be cheering her on at a watch party at The Coffee Shop Café.
Click here for information about the watch party and to find a link to stream Uhlaender's competition online.