Tarsha Ebbern first saw snow when she was 11 years old. One day, while tobogganing in Perisher, she saw people skiing and asked to try. She would later admit to feeling like ‘duck to water’ right away.

In the eighties Ebbern started skiing in a Thredbo-based freestyle program offering lessons to combined freestyle skiers. Developing the wide range of skills required to be competitive across the three freestyle disciplines - moguls, aerials and acro/ballet - required a lot of training, much focus and an increasing amount of travelling. Combined events were physically demanding too - for most of her career Ebbern had to compete for three days in each competition venue, while the discipline specialist had only one day of racing. 

As one of the earliest Australian Freestyle combined athletes, Ebbern initially grew under the wings of more established teams, like the U.S. and Canada, looking up at athletes like Jan Carmichael. When she started competing in the Europa Cup, aged 16, there was no Australian team supporting structure in place yet. 

Ebbern managed to establish herself as a regular on the World Cup circuit, collecting 93 World Cup starts across the four events. She was able to reach a podium placement for six times in her career, the first in Breckenridge (1989) in a Freestyle combined event.  She also narrowly missed a World Championships medal, finishing fourth in the combined at Oberjoch, in 1989. In 1992 she was selected to represent Australia at the Albertville Winter Olympics, where Ballet was included in the program as a demonstration event.

Once retired from competitive skiing, Ebbern moved to Colorado and became a coach, training local young athletes in the U.S. National team pathway. She stayed involved in the sport and later became a Level 2 FIS Freestyle judge.