(Video) Hopkins Whiz Kid: Male Rookie of the Year

Get ready—get set—and have fun!

For Hopkins sophomore Harris Dirnberger, these are words to live and race by. So far, it's working for him.

At the 2011 Cross Country Junior Olympics, Dirnberger placed third in the Classic Mass Start relay in the J2 division despite the challenge of losing and replacing his ski near the three-kilometer mark. He also helped his team place first in the Classic Relay with his aggressive performance as anchor, chasing down and passing the leading team to ski in a six-second win.

Dirnberger's amazing performance at his first Junior Olympics earned him the title Male Rookie of the Year for the Midwest division.

“Harris especially does well at mass start races going head to head with those he can chase and getting away from those trying to catch him. He likes to see his competition,” said Rob Fuhr, Dirnberger's coach. “Harris rose to another level in his racing at Junior Olympics. He surprised himself and everyone with his JO performance.”

Said Dirnberger: “It was pretty exciting. It was pretty crazy to think that you're competing against top skiers in the nation, which is really cool.”

Dirnberger first tried skiing with his buddy, Bjorn. He said he watched Bjorn use skating skis and thought it was the “coolest thing.” Dirnberger joined the Hopkins Nordic team along with his buddy in seventh grade. It was friendship that got him into it and friendship that made him stay.

“I think it's all the people in it that make it really fun,” he said. “If it weren't for all my friends and the seniors that are on the Nordic team right now, I probably wouldn't have stayed with it.”

This past season Dirnberger decided to take his skiing to the next level.

“Good skiers are made in the summer, so you really have to train to keep up your endurance and everything for the Nordic season,” he said. “If you don't do anything over the summer, it kind of just washes away.”

It was more in the spirit of fun, however, that Dirnberger decided to try out for the Junior Olympics.

“I didn't have any clue what the JOs were,” he said. “I was just like, a trip with my friends skiing—yeah, that sounds cool.”

After placing third in a classic race at the first qualifier Dirnberger said that everyone was telling him that he could qualilfy.

 And his response? “Oh, OK, that's something new. I'll try that – it seems fun,” he said.

Dirnberger understands that to be successful in skiing you need a good mental game.

“You can push yourself harder than you think you can. When you're hurting you've just got to tell yourself, 'Keep skiing, go fast' and you go fast,” he said. “You have to have a positive thought process.”

According to his mom, this positive thought process comes naturally to Dirnberger.

“He has this ability to make the most of everything,” she explained. “People commented after the classic race where he lost his ski that they were so proud of him for saying, 'I'm so excited I got third place' instead of saying 'I could have won that race.' That kind of sums up the way he looks at life.”

Dirnberger's trainer, Piotr Bednarski of Go! Training sees the same qualities.

“Harris is good about just getting the job done,” he said.

Bednarski described waxing some beat up, hand-me-down skis for a JO qualifier sprint race.

“Harris was totally unfazed by the state of his skis and went on to place second,” he said. “He got some better skis as the season went on, but the point is that he was excited to race and nothing was going to bother or distract him. That's a great attribute in an athlete.”

Said  Dirnberger: “In Nordic, if you don't put anything into it, you're not going to get anything out of it, and that can basically relate to anything else you do in life."