William Crowell '24 Recruiting Profile

I started racing at the age of six. I remember the first time I ran a local 5k I wanted to keel over on the side of the road and limp my way to the finish line but I kept going out of spite for the adults passing me and I waited for my moment at the finish line to sprint by them. Those first races I did for fun made me fall in love with the sport and the friends I made helped push me to higher limits. But as I developed into a better runner, I was drawn into competitive swimming, by the time I was nine, I also was the only boy on my swim team who had qualified for New Englands. The combination of running and swimming made me a good prospect for triathlons and I gave it a shot; the thrill of quickly changing sports all in one race motivated me to practice more and the joy of racing rapidly turned into the joy of winning. 

For the first few years of my racing career, I devoted my time evenly throughout all of these sports, and it worked for me; I competed in Cross Country Junior Olympic Nationals three times, I have gone to USA Triathlon Nationals five times, coming in second for thirteen-year-olds in 2019, 16th at Youth Draft Legal Nationals in 2021, and 21st in Junior Draft Legal Nationals in 2022. But as I got older, to meet my three sports goals, I increased my summer training to three practices a day which led to overtraining. I began to struggle in cross-country by my sophomore year; I knew that I had to make a decision.

I took the summer before Junior year to think about what sport I wanted to do in college and after re-experiencing the unique camaraderie of cross country, I decided that I wanted to run in college. While my times for cross-country were not as good relative to triathlon and swimming, I pushed myself and I qualified for the MIAA State meet at my Divisional Meet, placing 31st with a time of 17:12.26. My personal best in the mile is 4:43 during my Sophomore year and my personal best in the 800 is 2:06. While running is my main priority, I still swam and competed in triathlons, which led to an injury in my right knee that tried to stop my summer training, but I put more of my time into biking to strengthen my legs as much as possible and I improved my Functional Threshold Power to 317 watts(4.4 watts per kilogram, category 2 rider). After multiple weeks of frustration, I was finally able to run again at the beginning of August and was able to catch up to my summer training partners by the beginning of preseason. While it may be a stretch, my goal for this cross-country season is 16:30 in the 5k. 

My dedication to succeeding does not stop at sports, it also reaches into academics. I have taken four AP classes and will be taking 4 more this upcoming year, I achieved High Honors last year and Honors in my Sophomore year; I have been inducted into the National Honors Society as well. I have also developed leadership skills as I was appointed captain of the high school swim team during my Junior Year and have been a good role model for the younger athletes to follow. For me, my position on the team does not matter as much as the atmosphere and the camaraderie of the team.

Thank you for reading and being interested in getting to know some aspects of me. I hope I am a good fit for your program. Here is a link to a more detailed summary of my cross-country and track times: https://www.athletic.net/athlete/17477470/cross-country/high-school