WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Healthy as a Horse: Episode 5 - Bella Walsh

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Junior Bella Walsh joins Ella to discuss her time on the National Figure Skating Team. She highlights her mental game and how her experience has helped her as a college student. 

Welcome to Healthy as a Horse where we discuss health and wellness for the Hillsdale Chargers. I am Ella Malone and our guest today is Bella Walsh. She's a junior here at Hillsdale studying politics. On campus, she's involved in Kappa Kappa Kappa Gamma, Career Services, the Federalist Society, and the Tower Dancers. In high school, she traveled the world as a member of the Team USA figure skating team. So we're going to be asking her about her experience in that. Welcome to the show, Bella. Thanks for having me, Ella. So what was your workout and regiment like in high school as a member of? of the team USA. Yes. So by the end of my career, I was practicing six days a week, and that included

mornings and nights. Every day? Every day. Okay. So it was definitely an intense regimen that you had to follow. And then in terms of like off ice conditioning, I would participate in ballet two days a week. And then we also had conditioning three days a week. So things like running around the ring, we, by the end of my time, I was doing a little bit of weightlifting, but not so much that wasn't my group's focus. But overall, it was definitely hard on the body. A lot. Yeah, it was definitely a lot. And then when were your competitions?

How often did you do that? So it was always in them like the winter months. And they would a lot of times be back to back on weekends. So usually started in like early November and then it ended. It wrapped up in March. You would usually only have about two weeks in between to kind of rest, be back home, be at school. And then you'd have to go back on the road either on a plane to Europe or on a plane.

or on a bus to somewhere here in the Midwest. So it was pretty demanding in terms of just keeping up academically in my school, so for my mental health, and then also just physically being able to recover, go down, and then build back up. So in that, how did you prioritize your health, like eating, sleep, recovery? I think my relationship with eating and everything got better throughout because I didn't necessarily see food as fuel. By the end, I had worked with a nutritionist that was provided to me by my team,

which is super nice. And, you know, I didn't want to eat before practice. I was like, it's going to make me sick. I'd rather just eat after. And then after, I would just end up being super hungry. So I learned to, you know, get that clean protein in at the beginning of the day. And then even if it's at 5 in the morning, it's really hard to eat in the morning. I'm sure you know as a swimmer. I had to yesterday and I got nauseous. I know. It's very hard, but it's super necessary because you need that fuel because it's your energy. So last week I had on the head women swim coach, coach Kerner to talk about sports psych and mindset. Did you find the mental side of figure skating to be a struggle?

And then how did you grow in that? Yeah, it's definitely a demanding sport. It's very high competition, competition not with only other people, but also with yourself. It was important to kind of like have a grasp on what you can control and what you can't control. My team also, along with the nutritionist, offered sports psychologist. And working with them was very, very helpful, especially when it got to competing at the world championships where, you know, the amount of stress.

is huge and you have to be able to deal with that and accept that. I remember right before the world championships, I met with the sports psychologist. And she said, nerves come from lack of preparation. Do you think you're prepared? And I said, yeah. And she said, well, don't be nervous. So, you know, things like that, little one-liners that I still remember today. Awesome. All right. So you decided not to figure skating college. You came to Hillsborough. We definitely do not have a figure skating team. But I would say you're a healthy and active person. How do you prioritize your health now in college and how did your experience in figure skating shape that? I would say at first freshman year it was a little different because I finally wasn't forced to

go to the gym and workout. So I was like, oh, it's so nice. I can just do whatever I want. But now, you know, building a relationship with health has been really great throughout these years. And now, you know, I go to the Splux. I use my workout. I use my ab routine that I got from, you know, my figure skating team. And I'm able to then kind of make my health what I want it to be and prioritize it how I want to instead of having the control over, you know, what my coaches tell me to do. So it's been great to kind of like take grasp of it and make it my own. Yeah. Did the sports psych stuff kind of help you in academics? Oh, definitely. Another time that I get nervous is when I'm preparing for a test. I mean, right now I have a midterm later today. And I was texting my mom. I was like,

I'm so nervous about it. And she was like, I mean, you've competed in front of, you know, thousands of people in Italy. How are you nervous about a midterm? So I mean, I think it does give me perspective, but it also, you know, my work ethic was so built around this goal. And now I have a different goal. My goal is, you know, to gain this education and go to law school after graduation. So now my goal is shifted. But that work ethic that I built in skating is definitely still present in my academics. And it really helped me thrive here at Hillsdale, having it be such a hard school.

That's awesome. Well, thank you for being here today, Bella. I'm Ellen Malone. And this has been Healthy as a Horse for Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.