Dannica Ashnault, an orthopedic surgery physician assistant (PA), joined ECU Health in December 2025, and so far, she’s loving her new role.
“The team I work with is great,” she said. “Everyone has been so nice and welcoming, and it feels like a family.”
Dannica isn’t just an exceptional provider, however. She’s also a former Olympic-trained skier who started competing early.
Dannica grew up in New York state, began skiing at one and a half years old, and at age 14, she moved from home to attend high school at the Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont, the nation’s first elite ski academy.
“I had to decide at 14 if I wanted to go all-in on skiing, and looking back on that now, it seems crazy. I was living in a dorm, doing my own laundry and managing my time with school and skiing. It was a different way to grow up,” she said.
Her parents drove up every weekend to visit and watch her ski, and during the week, Dannica and her classmates adhered to a very strict regimen.
“I’d wake up, work out, eat breakfast, take classes, have lunch, have more classes, work out again, and if it wasn’t the winter, meet with the coach and watch videos,” she shared. “In the winter, I’d wake up, ski and train until lunch, have class after lunch, workout, tune skis, eat dinner and watch video. Then I’d go to bed and start over the next day.”
Such a structured life yielded great outcomes for Dannica and her classmates when it came to skiing, but by the time her senior year rolled around, she had a decision to make: continue skiing and training in the hopes to make the Olympics, or go straight to college. She chose the latter.
“I never went to a football game in high school. I never attended prom,” she said. “I wanted to be normal, to start my life. I love skiing, but I wanted other things too.”
One of those things included pursuing a career in medicine – something she’d been thinking about since sustaining an injury during a race.
“At 15, I had a really bad crash and blew out my knee in multiple places,” she said. “I was also knocked unconscious for eight minutes, so I had a pretty bad concussion.”
The injury meant she couldn’t ski, but it also meant she spent a great deal of time with her sports medicine team.
“I couldn’t have surgery until I could squat a certain weight, because they wanted me to get back to skiing as quickly as possible,” she recalled. “My surgery was five or six weeks after the injury, and when I woke up in my room, the surgeon was in my room with my parents, telling me to get up. I had a whole team around me and supporting me so I could get back to what I loved to do. I wanted to be a part of that experience for someone else, and that got me interested in medicine.”
After high school, Dannica attended Boston College, where she continued to ski for its Division I team.
By her junior year, however, Dannica said she was burned out. She wanted to start her life and career, and although she’d been considering medical school, she pivoted to PA school because of the flexibility it offered her.
Now, Dannica skis for fun, and she enjoys watching her former classmates find success in the sport.
“I’ve been waking up to watch the Olympics,” she said. “The ski racing community is so small, and it’s cool to see what they’re doing. My former lifting buddy in high school, Nina O’Brien, competed in the Olympics, and my classmate, Mikaela Shiffrin, just won gold in slalom.”
Dannica said she enjoyed her time as a competitive skier, but being a part of a team that sees patients through their care journey is just as rewarding.
“I wouldn’t trade my experience as a skier for the world, but I love what I do,” she said.