Brenna Huckaby is all about the journey. The medals along the way haven’t hurt, but her true joy lies in finding purpose in the process — not just in the destination of the Paralympic Games.

With three golds and a bronze medal under her belt, the U.S. snowboarder currently is competing at her third Paralympics. Her first event — para snowboard cross — did not go according to plan: Huckaby did not make it out of the semifinal round after a crash in front of her slowed her times down. Speaking ahead of the Games, she said her mission these days is far more about finding her happiness through her sport.

“I loved the fear and the challenge,” Huckaby said. "That adrenaline that you get before you start into a course, knowing that what you're doing could severely injure you — I like that. I find that rush to be something that I've always chased.”

A former gymnast, Huckaby was diagnosed with osteosarcoma after suffering from knee pain, and underwent an amputation of her right leg at just 14 years old. She was introduced to snowboarding not long after and hasn't looked back.

Being an elite athlete with a disability brings an extra set of challenges, and in a sport like snowboarding, not only does she need to finesse her sporting equipment, she also has to work out the best way to navigate a prosthetic right leg which serves as her all-important back leg.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all handbook on how to snowboard with a prosthetic leg,” Huckaby said. Prior to the Paralympics she’d been experimenting with placing a wedge into her binding, to rebalance her weight when riding, and she’s recently begun to find joy in tweaking the mechanics of her gear, adding she’s become “nerdy” about it. 

With snowboarding now a ubiquitous part of the Winter Paralympic program, it’s easy to forget the sport first was competed only 12 years ago in 2014 as part of the para Alpine program, and became a standalone sport for the first time in 2018.

Huckaby is well aware as the most decorated U.S. Paralympic snowboarder to date that she is forging a path for those who follow. She co-founded a media collective called Culxtured, with the mission of spreading Paralympians' stories, and she frequently can be seen advocating for the future of para sports. "For anyone new that comes into the sport, maybe with time we can make that handbook about what works and doesn’t work,” she said.

That willingness to experiment is pervasive throughout Huckaby’s life. A mother of two, she described balancing sport and family life similarly to the mechanics of her prosthesis. 

“It's definitely a trial and error process to find what works for us,” she said. “Like parasports, you figure out what works for you.”

That regularly means checking in with her husband and daughters, as well as checking in with herself, making sure that she’s OK so she can show up the best possible way no matter the setting. “I don’t think we always have it right; but because we’re able to slow down and see how we’re feeling, we’re able to make adjustments to do better,” she said.

As with parents in any profession, Huckaby said time management is one of the hardest things to juggle when prioritizing her time as a mom and as an elite athlete. Over the holidays, despite being just months out from the Paralympic Games, Huckaby completely disengaged from being an athlete, fully giving herself to her children.

“In a perfect world, I could be 100% present as a mom, and 100% present as an athlete. But we don’t live in that world,” she said.

But in many ways Huckaby credits her success to those enforced breaks. This will be the first Games she hasn’t been recovering from a pregnancy, and Huckaby noted that while she feels she's made incredible strides in her strength, taking a year off in past Paralympic cycles made her mentally stronger. The break gave her time to reset, to come back hungrier, with renewed motivation. This year, she found she had to fight a little harder to maintain focus and keep engaged.

Beyond the adrenaline and constant experimentation of her sport, Huckaby most loves the way it connects her to nature. She’s necessarily high up in the mountains, looking out over her home and the surrounding landscape. “There's something so healing and peaceful that just brings me so much calm and clarity and happiness in my life.”

Huckaby is partnering with Hershey’s Team USA campaign, which celebrates happiness as ‘The Real Gold,” as they embark on a new creative platform: ‘It’s Your Happy Place.’ Huckaby said the partnership couldn’t be more in line with her own personal approach to sport — and it doesn’t hurt that she loves candy.

She hopes that fans enjoy the Paralympic Games with this same perspective. “If you are a fan of sports in general, you will be a fan of para sports,” she said. “Sport is very humanizing of people with disabilities. We do it in a way that’s different. But it’s still badass.”

Watch Brenna Huckaby compete in the para snowboard banked slalom on Thursday, March 13 at 4 a.m. ET. streaming live on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.