USA Luge’s Sophia Kirkby of Ray Brook shows off one of the hand-made pins that she created during the Lake Placid FIL Luge World Cup on Saturday. (Enterprise photo — Parker O’Brien)

LAKE PLACID — Sophia Kirkby is not only hoping to qualify for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Winter Games in February, but she’s looking to bring her off-ice passion for ceramics with her as well.

The Ray Brook native, who competes in doubles luge, crafted thousands of handmade and hand-painted ceramic pins that she is planning on bringing to Italy — if she and her doubles partner Chevonne Forgan qualify for the Games.

Right now, the duo is in the driver’s seat to earn USA Luge’s lone women’s doubles spot as they’re one of the top teams in the world.

Kirkby, 24, said she might be the only person to have hand-made her own pins for the Olympics. The idea to bring her ceramics overseas has been molding for a while now.

She initially thought about bringing mugs or something along those lines, but that’s when a skeleton athlete asked her, “Why don’t you make pins?”

“And I was just like, ‘That is a great idea, I’ll get on that,'” Kirkby said. “So then I started just cranking them out. I cranked out about 2,000 or so.”

Pin trading has been a staple at the Olympics since the inception of the Games; however, the 1980 Winter Olympics — held in Lake Placid, just a stone’s throw away from Kirkby’s home hamlet — turned it from an exclusive athlete/official activity into something that spectators now collect.

It’s no secret that Kirkby loves ceramics. She loves talking about it.

It’s something she’s been doing since she was 6 or 7, after attending a handful of children’s classes at the Arts Center Lake Placid — formerly the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. Whenever she’s back in the U.S. on break, she returns to the kiln.

She makes shot glasses, mugs, earrings, magnets and pretty much anything she can.

And of the pins she’s made, Kirkby has already handed out a bunch of them — even to any member of the media who interviews her. But if she can qualify for the Olympics, then she plans to hand out a lot more.

“I did this in the studio at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts,” Kirkby said. “That’s where I have a ceramic studio, and I just made thousands of pins that I have available on Amazon.”

The pins she’s crafted have a women’s doubles luge design, with different colors, using the U.S. flag and the Italian flag. But her pins aren’t only luge-related. She’s made some for hockey in partnership with women’s hockey great Hilary Knight, and skeleton, honoring U.S. slider, Mystique Ro.

Kirkby is selling them on Amazon, and each one comes mounted on a professionally designed card with details. Her storefront on the site can be found at https://tinyurl.com/2w8bhka2.

“I can guarantee you, if you get one of my pins, you’re gonna feel connected to me,” Kirkby said. “I can’t describe it. I can’t explain it, but this is what 100% people have told me when they get my pottery.”

Kirkby has also partnered with multiple local shops in Lake Placid to help sell her pins.

“As well as a little family shop owned in Cortina, Italy,” she said. “I’ve also branched out to Italy, and I’m working with a small family there, and I’m also working with a small bar in Germany because it’s fun.”

Kirkby and the rest of the USA Luge national team are currently on their winter break, after competing in Lake Placid this past weekend. They’ll return to sliding next week, in Sigulda, Latvia, before competing in two more Olympic qualification races.

The USA Luge team won’t find out if they’ve officially made the Olympic team until the list of nominees from the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee is announced around Jan. 12, 2026.