Phoenix Scott '26 Recruiting Profile

When I was in middle school, I did not really ever have much going on outside of school besides this program called Ultimate Ninjas, which is basically the equivalent of the show American Ninja Warrior, but was laid out in a more sport-like way. Although everything seemed fine, I felt like I was missing something. I had been hearing things from friends and parents about our school getting cross country added to the list of school sports we could do, however I never thought much of it. I was never really that big on running to begin with, but eventually my parents and close friends convinced me to try it. Since I had some friends on the team, it couldn't really be that bad. When I first started, like most people, I was pretty slow. I never really liked the sport, however that would soon change. I was nowhere near the fastest on my team in grades seven and eight. However, freshman year of high school I would begin track, but not cross country since I had heard the races were even longer than before. During track, I dabbled a bit in the mile, however I took pole vault more seriously. I would pole vault at Rise Pole Vaulting outside of school for extra practice, since my mile time was pretty average at a mild 5:26 to end off the year. Once summer comes around, we have a summer running camp to build us back up to run in cross country. Somehow my coaches convinced me that I should stick around and at least try cross country, and so I did. Once school began to inch closer, I attended a race called Detweiller at Dark. Our team annually competes in this event for fun, as a way of benchmarking how you improved over the summer. I ran a 20:26 to start off the year, and thought that was the fastest I could ever go. Fast forward to halfway through the season, I had gotten my time down to around 18:30, before going into the Metamora meet. Here I broke eighteen minutes for the first time, and being the last meet before conference, and we only really had four main runners for the post season team, I realized I had a shot of making varsity. I finished at conference with a time of 16:47.7, dropping my time around a minute from the last meet. We went on to qualify for state, after running my season best time at our 2.95 mile sectional, with a time of 16:08, which would be my fastest time of the season. Track went about the same. My first race I brought my 5:26 outdoor time to a 5:08 indoor, before breaking five minutes the next time I ran the mile at the Stagg Invite, where I ran the mile leg in our freshman sophomore DMR. My mile split was 4:51. However, that season I had mostly focused on the 800m, bringing my previous time of 2:31 to a 2:05 at the end of the season.

Anyway, I worked extremely hard to get where I am today. I am an extremely competitive person, and I have my goals set extremely high for this track season, wanting to bring my 4:44 mile time down to 4:14, which is my school's current mile record. I am a great leader and many of our team's underclassmen look up to me as someone to follow in the footsteps of, and I've encouraged them and cheered them on every step of the way. I am a very upbeat, generous, and determined person, and will do mostly whatever it takes to reach my goals.