Joseph Young '20 Recruiting Profile

My goals in college are to explore the world outside of high school and to challenge myself in as many ways as possible, both athletically, socially, and academically. I 

have been home schooled my whole life and just recently joined the Berlin High school. This has given me a slight disadvantage socially and academically, as I have not had as many opportunities as the "normal" student. The public school did not have me on record during my freshman year, which means that I have to make up extra work online which I already did while I was home schooled. I  have basically caught up now and I'm challenging myself in school by taking high level AP courses and keeping my up. Being home schooled did not only hurt me, though. Because I was home schooled I have been able to learn how to teach myself, as the work as been a little to advanced for my parents to teach me over the past few years. the one thing my parents did teach me though is they taught me how to be a good person. They both have very high moral standards and have taught me the same. Thus I am honest and hardworking. This gives me a great advantage in the classroom because I care when everyone else doesn't care. This has payed off and leaves me top of my class, even though I am taking advanced courses and I am new to public school. I love history and learning about current and ancient societies. I am also very quick with math and I am currently taking computer aided drafting which I enjoy and excel at. I know these subjects are not related, but they are what I enjoy. There you go, that's my academic history.    

Now for the important part, athletics. I joined XC my freshman year, running for Berlin high. It was a new sport to me but I managed to make a PR of 21:30 at the D III state meet. I really started to love the sport and I ran all winter, every day whether it was -10 F or pouring rain. When track came along, I was ready this time. I really pushed myself during the season and I managed to take a senior's place in the 4x800m at state's with a split of 2:16. I was happy with that time and I stayed fit by biking all summer. I pushed myself again during XC my sophomore year, but I pushed a little too hard and got achilles tendonitis right before state's. I did improve from freshman year, though. My PR this time around was 19:58. I recovered fully during the winter and did some moderate training, about 20 miles a week. During the track season I ran the mile, 800, and 4x800. I PRed  in the mile with 5:04 and we went to the Meet of Champions in the 4x800. We broke almost broke the school record with a time of 8:33 and I ran a split of 2:08. I signed up for a half marathon a week after track ended and I ran 1:41:08, which is decent considering the temperature ( 92 degrees F and a sunny course.) I peaked with 45 miles a week during the summer and I was all ready for my junior year of XC. The season started out well with me 2nd on the team. I did much better than I expected myself to do, frequently getting top 3 in moderate sized races and running about 18:20 average. I PRed with 17:40 on the only flatish course and I missed the meet of champions by only 6 places, getting 26th in states. Now I am getting ready for track and I've done some research. Before I used to go out and kill myself in a 3-6 mile tempo run but according to some research I've done my goal should be different. My plan over the winter is to really increase my "easy" paced millage while still keeping occasional speed work. I am working really hard this winter in hopes of dominating track. My goal for next season is to break 2:02  in the 800 and 4:40 in the mile. 

    I want to run XC and track in college as a way to really push myself to the limit and to do things I never imagined I could do. I want to discover a way to combine my love of running, my ability to study, and my love of competition to help make this world a better place. I haven't exactly found a way to do that yet, but I'm working on it. My moto is not "do what you love", but instead love what you do. This allows me to excel at everything I do because I give everything my best. 

(Longer isn't necessarily worse either, right?)