PALMER -- Skating on the ice is easy for her, but Olympic hockey silver medalist Kerry Weiland said it was a little more difficult to speak to students Tuesday morning at Palmer High School.

"It shows how far I've come," she said. "When I was here, I was still very quiet."

She didn't talk a lot during her school days, certainly not at a lectern set up at one end of the school cafeteria. But her athletic abilities were no secret to her teachers.

"You knew she was special. She was a super, hard-working kid with a great attitude. She definitely wasn't afraid to mix it up with the boys, even back then," said Brandon Blake, a physical education and health teacher who taught Weiland when she went to school there in the late 1990s. Weiland was the only girl on the Palmer High hockey team.

She graduated in 1999. She said that growing up between two brothers, competition was part of daily life. Athletic skill came naturally and she enjoyed being active, she said.

Weiland spoke at the school Tuesday, after state Rep. Carl Gatto presented legislative citations to the Palmer High boys nordic ski team, which won the Region III championship for the first time in 20 years. She lauded the team's accomplishments and encouraged students to be persistent in chasing their dreams.

It was that chase, not just the games, that made her an Olympian, she said.

"The Olympics gave me a platform that made me constantly decide to compete," Weiland said.

Making that daily decision was more difficult after she was cut from the 2006 Olympic Women's Hockey team after four years of training, she said.

She could have trained for four more years and got to the tryouts only to be cut again, she said.

She decided instead to battle the voice that whispered she wasn't good enough to be an Olympian.

On her one-mile commute to train each day, she consciously affirmed her decision to be an Olympian, to help combat feelings of self-doubt, she said.

"I'm going to do my best and not wonder the rest of my life what could have happened next," she said.

She was the only Alaskan to win a medal at last month's Winter Olympics.

Coming back to the high school, Weiland said, she could feel old anxieties lurking -- "Am I pretty enough? Smart enough?"

She said it felt pretty great to come back having faced those challenges, conquered those fears and know she was an Olympian.

Even better, she said, was being able to encourage the students and teachers at the school to hold fast to their dreams and conquer their self-doubt too.

"Just let yourself dream," she told the group of more than 100 students, teachers and press.

MAKING THE ROUNDS

Weiland is headed today to Juneau to have lunch at the governor's mansion. Gatto said she will be presented a legislative citation recognizing her achievements.

A first-ever visit to the state capital, Weiland said she's looking forward to doing some sightseeing.

When she gets back, she plans to visit all the schools she attended locally, to speak to students about following their dreams.

She also plans to stop by the Palmer Pioneer Home and she'll be at the joint Wasilla and Palmer Chamber of Commerce luncheon meeting March 31 at the Palmer Moose Lodge.

Next month she and her teammates are flying to Washington, D.C., to visit the White House.

WORKING THE CROWD

After speaking Tuesday, Weiland autographed cards for students and faculty who gathered around her table. She smiled for photos with students as her silver medal got passed around for everyone to pose with. She thanked numerous students who said they'd watched her play during the Olympics and even agreed to join the Palmer High hockey team during a practice next week. After a month off the ice, she said she needs to get back in gear for a charity game coming up.

Weiland told hockey team members stories about her old days with the team, when supplies were limited -- they didn't have water bottles, for example, and she confessed to having purposely hit a few pucks under her team's bench at away games so they had pucks to practice with later.

Things have changed for the Palmer team, which now has six girls on the roster. The team has water bottles and gear, but players talking hockey with Weiland were agog at the idea of having personalized sticks and being able to ask for new equipment whenever it was needed, which was true for the Olympic team.

INSPIRING FAMILY

Part of a big family -- two brothers and four sisters -- Weiland posed for a photo with her nephew and niece, both Palmer High students.

Lilly Cullers, her niece and a freshman at Palmer High, said she and her family traveled to Vancouver to watch Weiland play. She brought back clothes from the USA Olympics store and a few Olympic dreams of her own.

Cullers played on the junior-varsity volleyball team, which won its end-of-season tournament against Wasilla High in October. She's hoping to make the varsity team next year and said she hopes to play in the Summer Olympics one day.

"I just have to shoot for the stars," she said.