In high school during the cross country running season, Sidney Barbier's coach gave all of the athletes on the team an erasable marker for a mirror at their homes so they could compose a motivational saying for themselves.
 
For Barbier, she wrote, "Have grit. Be strong. You are tenacious."
 
Those words went on to have a much larger meaning for the University of Denver Nordic cross-country skier than just motivation for a training or on race day. They were a mantra for her to continue to push through during the most difficult and painful part of her life.
 
For more than six years, Barbier dealt with the symptoms of nutcracker syndrome, but for much of that time it was undiagnosed and her symptoms baffled doctor after doctor.
 
"To be honest, debilitating is maybe the best word to describe it when it's the only thing you can think about," said Barbier of the pain level she experienced. "I think it's also something that is a part of my memories; that's kind of the saddest thing. I think about in high school, every movie that I went to, I remember the pain. I remember my freshman year at DU, we went on a field trip with my 'living and learning community' that I was in; I was in so much pain that I didn't go to the campfire. Like those little things. All I wanted to do was to call my mom because that was all I could do and have someone to talk through it and tell me to breathe and tell me it was going to be OK."
 
Nutcracker syndrome is a rare vascular condition that compresses the renal vein. Due to this compression, blood can't reach the kidney and gets backed up, causing pressure. Some people that have nutcracker syndrome won't even notice the pain, but for others it can be a nearly intolerable experience.
 
That was Barbier experience, dealing with sharp stabbing pain on her left side and back and a sharp twist in her abdomen and stomach.
 
"It is when that vein is compressed, like a nut, cracked like a nut, which is kind of a terrible way to think about it," Barbier said of the condition's name.
 
Barbier can still recall one of the first times she experienced the pain in winter 2019. She was a sophomore in high school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and had just finished a Nordic race in Frisco before the initial episode struck and she healed over in agony on the side of the course.
 
At the time, she didn't think much of it. As a young athlete competing in an endurance sport, powering through discomfort and pain is a common practice for everyone. However, it became clear to her and her family that this pain wasn't typical of an athlete and continued to worsen.
 
The amount of discomfort would fluctuate—on the low end she would feel good enough to live a normal teenage life, but the extreme end had her curled up on the bed at home in agony, with only a heating pad giving any slight sense of relief.
 
"At the beginning when it all started in high school, it wasn't every single day or for long periods of time. It kind of got worse and worse. It was something like, OK, it's going to happen probably once a week where it's really, really bad and at least every few weeks where it was going to be extremely bad for a few days where I'm constantly in bed or having to deal with my coping mechanisms, like my heating pad. It became pretty constant in that sense."
 
On a scale from one to 10, Barbier says her baseline pain on most days was at a level of five, and that was what she dealt with constantly.
 
"It didn't ever go away," she noted. "I think that's another key thing. Yes, I had episodes, but it was always still there in some capacity."
 
"It would get up to an eight, but I would never say 10 because I don't know what that really is. But five was my baseline, and I lived with that baseline for years."
 
What transpired for her and her family was six years of misdiagnoses, failed treatments and invasive surgeries—including the removal of her gallbladder and exploration for endometriosis—all in an attempt to find out what was wrong. As a high performing academic student and athlete, some doctors that she met with suggested that she was just a stressed out teenager or was dealing with an eating disorder.
 
Nutcracker syndrome was actually brought up early in the process, but Barbier didn't have the tale-tell symptom, blood in urine, so it was dismissed as a possibility.
 
Doctors also suggested she compose a 'pain journal,' with her writing down her symptoms to see if there was a pattern—but there wasn't really one.
 
"I looked back at that journal recently, and it was pretty crazy to see all of the red dots where I had episodes because I was trying to track it. And to see the words that I used too, like 'I can't do this anymore.' Those big of words," she said. "When you're at that point and you can't do this—that's also maybe a good way to describe it. 'I don't know what to do, nothing will help me, no one can help me, what do I do?' Those were the things that I would write all the time because I was just stuck."
 
And yet, the pain didn't stop Barbier from continuing to pursue her passions.
 
In high school, she was a member of Girl Scouts of Colorado, All-State Orchestra, National Honors Society, Yampa Valley Sustainability Council, Eco-Club and Student Government at Steamboat Mountain School. She raced with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club (SWSC), competed at the U.S. Cross Country Juniors Nationals in 2018 and 2019 and secured a spot on the Denver ski team, joining the squad as an 18-year-old freshman.
 
She didn't slow down with her outside passions in college either.
 
Barbier played the viola in the school's Lamont Symphony Orchestra and Bluegrass Ensemble, worked with the DU Sustainability Council and was a Senior Senator and Executive Chair of Sustainability in Denver's Undergraduate Student Government.
 
Barbier graduated earlier this month with a pair of bachelor's degrees in environmental science and music and also earned a minor in physics. She also published and co-authored an undergraduate sustainability textbook as a junior in 2023-24 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa—one of the United States' oldest and most prestigious academic honors society.
 
"She epitomizes what a student-athlete is through her passions for Nordic skiing and academics, as well as her role in the DU community," Denver Nordic Head Coach Rogan Brown said of Barbier. "She has battled through a lot over the past four years, but she was always ready to work in trainings and was a great and supportive teammate each time."
 
Even with her calendar full, Barbier continued to train and race with the DU ski team. Barbier competed at the NCAA West Regionals each season, finished 37-of-38 career races and earned eight top-20 results while dealing with the unrelentless pain and racing in the toughest conference of collegiate skiing.
 
On the ski tracks, there are two accomplishments that she is the most proud of—with both coming at Howelsen Hill Ski Area in her hometown of Steamboat Springs.
 
The first came with a pair of 15th-places finishes in the conference championships as a freshman in 2022, racing in front of family and friends on a course she knows well.
 
"My top result was on my home course in Steamboat where I had everybody who had ever supported me since I was a little cruiser. I had my 'Little Cruiser' (SWSC) coach Burkie (Greg Burkholder) there; I remember him cheering me on that really steep climb in Steamboat," she said. "I think that when I saw the results, I was like, 'that's so cool,' knowing that was my goal at that time and that I met that goal and exceeded it because I was just hoping for a top 20. I think it was really gratifying and being in Steamboat and knowing that I had given it my all out there and wasn't necessarily having a terrible day pain-wise."
 
The second moment came the following season, but with a much different result. She recorded the only DNF of her collegiate career and had to be carried down to the base area by her coaches. On this day, the pain was unbearable and she made the decision to put her health first and drop out of the race.
 
"I think that is something everyone hates to do," Barbier said of not finishing that particular race. "Some people do it more than others for different reasons, but the fact that I did and didn't push myself in that moment, looking back it is something I could be proud of.
 
"I hated it at the time. I was so embarrassed and I didn't want to be crying in front of others—I hated crying in front of others—and had my coach have to help me down to the base of the ski mountain. I didn't want to see myself as somebody who gives up. I think I can look back and say all of this, but I think it was a little bit of a proud moment that I'm putting myself first and this is what had to happen. I couldn't physically push through this."
 
For three seasons, she battled through the pain with the ski team, in her musical performances and in her extracurricular activities on campus. Finally as a junior, Barbier and her family got a breakthrough.
 
A family member suggested they check out the Cleveland Clinic to see if the renowned research hospital could figure out what might be wrong. In December 2023, the family first traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, and Barbier went through a series of tests and scans and met with doctors and specialists in a variety of medical areas in an attempt to find a solution.
 
One of the final doctors that Barbier was scheduled to see was the clinic's urologist. Sidney and her family were skeptical of going initially and were even thinking of not attending the meeting, as they had seen one before with no luck. They decided to go in the end, and the visit finally led to an answer.
 
It was the urologist that suggested her see Dr. Mohamed Eltemamy, who determined that Barbier did in fact have nutcracker syndrome.
 
"My mom always says, 'everything happens for a reason,'" Barbier said. "I had to go on this journey and for some reason I ended up at the GI doctor in Denver, who referred me to this doctor, who referred me to this doctor, and somehow I ended up in the Cleveland Clinic with this doctor. It all kind of happened for a reason. And yes, if I hadn't been there, maybe they would have figured it out that I had nutcracker syndrome. Maybe I would have had my kidney removed because that is what most other surgeons can do."
 
"Sidney's situation was not a classic, straightforward, black-and-white case," Eltemamy noted in a Cleveland Clinic blog post. "Unfortunately, that made her journey much longer."
 
After a bit of a wait-and-see approach, the pain continued to worsen for Barbier and the decision was made for her to have surgery in March 2024—but it wasn't just any kind of surgery. Instead of a traditional procedure that included an invasive, open incision across the abdomen, Eltemamy and the Cleveland Clinic suggested a single-port robotic renal vein transportation. This type of operation would create only a three centimeter cut for the surgery and move the vein that was causing the pressure to a different spot. It would also allow her to have a quicker recovery.
 
Barbier was the first person in the world to have this type of surgery—a nearly seven-hour procedure.
 
"How I happened to be the first person to have this surgery is pretty crazy," Barbier said. "I guess I got lucky, and I think being an athlete helped me because he was very supportive of me getting back and recovering so I could return to competition. I was young and could easily recover well."
 
For the first time since she was a freshman in high school, Barbier was finally liberated from the pains of nutcracker syndrome and was looking forward to competing her senior season with the Denver ski team.
 
But as luck has it, her final year with the Pioneers was not entirely pain free.
 
Barbier was feeling good with her fitness as she was roller skiing and was back on snow on skis, but she was soon diagnosed with a torn labrum in her hip just prior to the start of the collegiate season.
 
"I was really excited for those first few races, and then had some bad news when I learned about my hip, which is definitely a little bit frustrating and mentally challenging. I wanted that senior season. I was given an option to redshirt this year—I could have tried to do a master's here and taken the year off and recovered in the fall—but I decided not to and wanted to finish the best I could. I did cortisone injections and different treatments to try and minimize the pain."
 
Once again, Barbier battled through pain and finished each of the 10 races she competed in 2025, including the 7.5-kilometer distance classic at the conference championships and NCAA West Regionals in Anchorage, Alaska.
 
She was again racing in excruciating pain, but it was a different kind this time and she knew the source of it.
 
"I was doing a classic race, and yes, my hip hurts because I have something wrong, but I'm not waking up in the morning in pain or going to bed in pain or after a meal in pain," she recalled. "It was very different, and I could enjoy the season a lot more with teammates and friends in a different way than I had in the past three seasons."
 
After her senior season, she had surgery to repair her hip labrum and is now fully pain free.
 
In addition to graduating with her two bachelor's degrees, she put together a cumulative 4.0 grade-point average in her time at Denver. She is a four-time recipient of the Denver Athletics Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award, given to the athlete(s) in the school's 18 Division-I sports that have the highest grade-point average in their class each season. Barbier was the only senior this year in the athletic department to ace every class in their time at DU, and she is not done with school yet.
 
She earned a scholarship with the U.S. Fullbright Program and will spend the next two years at Universite Grenoble-Alpes in Grenoble, France, where she will continue her environmental studies by getting a master's degree in Earth, planetary, and environmental science. Nestled at the base of French Alps, Barbier will have plenty of opportunities in between classes and research to ski on the local Nordic tracks and alpine slopes—without pain.
 
Her journey of resilience and determination to find a cause for her pain is a reason why she is the 2025 winner of the Honda Inspiration Award from the Collegiate Women's Sports Awards.
 
"I think I definitely don't give myself enough credit," she said. "The more people ask me questions about it and make me retell the story, I kind of realize what a big deal it is, and I didn't necessarily think about it at the time. I was training at a high level with some of these athletes who were pain free and doing the same things that I was doing, but without the extra stress and physical pain. It is definitely a testament for what I went through and hopefully won't have to continue to go through in the future. But even if I do, I know I can get through whatever is thrown at me from whatever angle."
 
Barbier's written words of "Have grit. Be strong. You are tenacious," still remain on that mirror at her family home in Steamboat Springs. Those simple words might not have been anything special at the time, but they grew in meaning.
 
It was the motivation for her to continue to push forward and give her hope that an answer to her pain would one day be found.
 
"To have grit, be strong, be tenacious, and I think not straying from that is probably the biggest thing that I am proud of in everything and for finding that support," Barbier said. "How it looked like to be gritty looked different at different times, but I was able to stick by those seemingly silly words for the entire time and hopefully into the future as well."
 

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