- 2016 Highlights
Personal Statement
I consider myself unique and have an extraordinary story to share. I am proactively working toward my academic collegiate goals by attending an Early College High School. That means I am a concurrent high school and college student with 43 college hours under my junior belt as well as another 12 hours planned for this semester while maintaining a 3.2 GPA. In addition to my academic and sports achievements, I work part time at an Equestrian Center. More specifically, I am Christian young man with good morals whose first love is basketball. I aspired to be the best ball player I could be. I was willing to do anything asked of me. During my freshman year, my basketball coach asked me to run track during the off season. In the district meet, I came in first place in the 2400 and the 3200. I also qualified for Regionals in both events. Coach was pleased.
When my sophomore year started, I did not sign up for Cross Country because I wasn't crazy about running. I was a basketball player. However, when district came and my school needed one more runner, the coach approached me the day before the meet to tell me that I was going. At that meet, for my first time ever, I ran 5K, because coach asked. I ran it in 19:20, leading my school and qualifying for Regionals. I had no practice, no conditioning, nothing. Everyone was so excited. This is when I realized I must have some kind of gift for running. When track season started my sophomore year, I was working part time at the Equestrian Center which caused me to miss about half of the practices. Therefore, I decided to just run the 1600 at district. My time for the 1600 was 5:06 and I qualified for Regionals. At Regionals, I learned a gift that is not trained or developed will only take you so far. I earned 4th place at Regionals.
Even though I was proud of my freshman and sophomore year successes, my heart and head were only focused on improving my basketball skills. I still did not truly see myself becoming passionate about running. This year I was introduced to a new cross country coach who helped me see myself and running completely differently. She has ignited a passion within, challenged me to really push myself, and given me a training ethic which allows me to continually challenge myself. I am seeing accomplishments each week. I now, not only accept that I have untapped potential with the right training, I am thankful for my highly competitive spirit, this gift to run and the value of training. I am intrinsically motivated with the will to win! At the beginning of Junior season my fastest competition time for XC was 16:07, making me the district champion. This year in 2016 I have succeeded to be the District, Area, and Regional champion while qualifying for State in both the 1600 and 3200 this year in track. I now see myself as a runner in training who happens to also play basketball.
2016 XC season was a success as well. I win district and came in 3rd at regionals, while qualifying for the UIL state meet. I placed 11th at state.
I have big hopes for 2017 track season, I hope to build on where I left off in 2016 track season, which ended in Austin at the state championships.
