She grew up in Toronto community housing at Islington and the 401, commonly known as Izzy St. Andrews, with her parents and three siblings, where her parents still remain.
Appiah originally discovered her passion of sports at Riverdale Park, thanks to the Jays Care Foundation's Rookie League program, a humanitarian arm of the Toronto Blue Jays that brought kids from various under-privileged neighborhoods in Toronto to play baseball every Thursday.
"You don't have a lot of resources growing up in communal housing." So you just play with what you've got," Appiah said, from Königssee, Germany, a half-hour south of the Austrian border near Salzburg, where the Canadian bobsleigh team was preparing before travelling to the Winter Olympics.
"I was lucky in that we had a large field in our 'backyard' where I resided... So, that's how I'm going to play different games... My passion for sports stemmed from simply having access to whatever was available."
Appiah went to Rexdale's Don Bosco High School before attending York University to study psychology. Between 2008 and 2013, she was a standout on the track and field team, excelling in shot put and hammer throw and garnering Female Athlete of the Year honors in 2012-13. But Appiah was getting dissatisfied with track and field's solitary nature, and she needed something fresh to do after school because she didn't have a realistic possibility of competing in the Summer Games.
Appiah was introduced to bobsleigh at that time. It happened in 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, when she witnessed Canadian Shelley-Ann Brown, flying down the Whistler track with partner Helen Upperton en route to a silver medal in the two-woman event.
Appiah, who describes herself as a "extroverted introvert" who grew up participating in team sports but quickly realized that "hand-eye coordination and I are not friends," was drawn to the opportunity to pursue bobsleigh, a team sport with a close-knit community due to its niche nature, which she felt she was missing out on in track and field. She also saw right away that her superior strength and endurance would allow her to excel in bobsleigh.
But, more crucially, as a Black woman considering a mainly white sport, Appiah saw herself in Brown, a Scarborough native of Jamaican origin who also studied Psychology at university while on a track and field scholarship. Winter sports are also far less diverse than their summer equivalents, especially in sports like bobsleigh where the financial burden is so significant, Brown allowed Appiah to believe that she could not only pursue bobsleigh, but excel in it. "I know certain people in certain circles would despise me for suggesting that representation important, but it does, because what would have happened if Shelley-Ann [Brown] hadn't competed in 2010?" Appiah says, "Who knows if this interview would even be going on." "It's one of those things where you don't understand how much something affects you subconsciously." And that's what it felt like for me, watching Shelley-Ann stand on that platform, at the bottom of the track, cheering like a crazy woman for winning the medal she'd worked so hard for." It had an impact on Appiah and helped her realize something that many non-racists take for granted.
"For whatever reason, the barrier is simply that much higher in certain sports." to break through, whether it be cost or access or whatever it is—racialized people just have a harder time getting into certain sports. And until someone does, we internalize it as that’s not for us,” Appiah says. “And I kind of want to help break down that stereotype that certain sports aren’t for us or certain activities aren’t for us, and really bring in that representation piece so that we have a stronger team, because who knows how much stronger Team Canada could be if we were able to get the best of the best that we have in this country, regardless of race?
Appiah is one of the most authentic and down-to-earth athletes you'll ever meet. She has a little ego and makes an effort not to make things about herself, instead crediting her colleagues and supporters. Appiah, on the other hand, values representation so much that she feels compelled to be open and honest about the dearth of it in Canadian athletics and winter sports in general, even if it ruffles a few feathers. That's because Appiah has been personally impacted by the unequal playing field that comes with winter sports like bobsleigh, which are often pricey and inaccessible, even in wealthy countries like Canada.
In the summer of 2016, Appiah attended her first Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton (BCS) test camp, summer of 2011, which happened to be taking place at York University. After graduating York in 2013, Appiah joined BCS as a breakwoman, performing in both the North America’s Cup and World Cup circuits. She was a natural, relying on her elite strength and athleticism from her track days to push her pilots to the podium, including two-time Olympic champion Kaillie Humphries to a gold and bronze medal and rookie pilot Alysia Rissling to her first ever World Cup bronze medal.
h said it seemed like the world was falling apart after the federation designated her an alternate for PyeongChang, and she almost gave up bobsleigh altogether, even considering retirement from professional sport. She believed she had completed all of the federation's requests, and when the decision was made by higher-ups, she questioned if it was worth returning for another four years "to a team that I no longer trusted and to a system that I believed was divided."
Even if the conditions were unfair and the news was unexpected, it would have been easy to give up. Appiah chose to devote another four years of hard effort and financial uncertainty to the sport of bobsleigh. This time, however, she is different, Instead of continuing as a breakperson, she was going to do it on her own terms, learning to fly instead of continuing as a breakperson, and competing in the sport of monobob as a way to take control of her own destiny... literally.
