Richard Wade '24 Recruiting Profile

            I am a natural born runner. Here is my story. As you may know my name is Richard Donovan Wade. I am a 2-year varsity high school cross country runner. I have been either the best or second best in my school for both years. My first year was my sophomore year; I had no running experience besides in basketball. I had emailed the current coach at the time and asked, since I didn’t have time to do first tryouts, if I could do the second one just for fun. He said yes, as long as I’m not expecting to make the team. I agreed and proceeded to the tryout. I started out too fast; I got exhausted in the first ten seconds, but since I’m super competitive, I was trying my hardest to be first. I was neck-to-neck with 2 seniors, and I was super scared that I was going to collapse. As I was about to ease up, I started to pull ahead of the 2 seniors and had a big first-place advantage. I kept running, and by the time I finished, my coach looked at me and said, "Are you sure you don’t want to join the team?" because my time was 25 minutes; the next closest was 30 minutes. I said, "Yeah, I just did this for fun." I ended up joining the team, and within two weeks, it was 2 days before the first meet, and I got my time down to 18 minutes.

            Then the next day, I was playing basketball with 5 minutes left of Rec. I came down with a rebound and rolled my ankle off of someone’s foot. Usually, when I do that, I get up immediately with no pain. But this time was different; I couldn’t put pressure on it. The next day, the day of the race, I went to the nurse to get cleared to run. She said I broke my ankle, and I asked if I could be cleared to run the race, but she said no. I told my coach, and he was immediately sad. I then went to the hospital the next day, and they said I would be out for 5 weeks. My team was invited to the championship race, and I made sure I wasn’t missing it, so I started rehabbing my ankle. I took the boot off 3 weeks earlier than supposed to and ran my first practice back. I did terrible; I had never done so badly before. I then ran the practice the day after and lapped the whole team in practice. On race day, I ran full speed at the beginning, got to 10th place, then somebody curb stomped the back of my knee. I kept running, I got 93rd place, and my time was 21:12. I was disappointed in myself. After that, I kept training and didn’t try out for basketball the next year. I stopped running for a year, and then my school brought back cross country this year. I lapped the entire team in all three tryouts. My time was 24 minutes on the first race. Then I started running twice a day for the rest of the season, three times a day including tryouts. I ran a local 5k the other day and got 4th place. I could have gotten first, but the track was not properly marked, so I ran the wrong way and ended up at dead last, behind about 500 people. I sprinted to first place, was catching up to the pacer, and then I tripped, which made me drop down to 7th place at the end of the race, around the last quarter mile. I sprinted full speed and got 4th place, 1st in my age group.

            This is my story; I hope you enjoyed it. Please contact me with scholarship opportunities. I am a senior this year in high school at Georgia Cumberland Academy. I will continue to train to become first in the seven bridges 5k next year, In Chattanooga Tennessee; if I train hard enough, I can get to 15 minutes. My life goal ever since I was seven, was to become a Michigan Wolverines. The thing that would cause me to not become one is I am very dyslexic, to the point I cannot read. Because of this my academic level is very low cause my grades not to be as they should be. Other than that I will be a good runner or basketball player on any team that lets me have chance at being great. All I need is to have a couple to three month off with a provided trainer to push me through workouts, training, and dieting. If you want to contact me for more information and to get to know me more here’s my number 4234003431. I would love to talk about getting a trainer and what scholarships I could earn.

Best Wishes,

Richard Wade