Jude Webster '24 Recruiting Profile

537- That represents the number of hours dedicated to long-distance running training during my junior year. That is more time than I spent in the classroom for my AP chemistry, AP United States History, AP statistics, and AP English classes combined, and I loved my junior year courses! That dedication to running did not start from just anywhere. It started out with convenience.

When I was a sophomore and still dependent on my mom’s schedule as my chauffeur, I was forced to stay at school for two hours or more after school had ended. It truly felt like the end of the world to a transfer student looking to garner popularity and coolness. I begged my mom for an alternative way to get home but it seemed there was no other option than to sit and wait. Well, there was one option. My grandfather made the egregious suggestion of taking me home right after school with one caveat. I had to run after school. That was an instant no from me. After a handful of weeks of remaining after school and making small talk to the nice geometry teacher, I reluctantly accepted. My grandfather was a track coach in the eighties and nineties so he knew a thing or two about running. Eagerly, now I think luckily however somewhat sinisterly, my grandfather picked me up from school and we went to the park. We went on a run that felt like death and misery and by the end of it I wanted to never do that again! Then, the next day I did it again. This new arrangement was a slightly counterproductive trade-off I must add. I would only get home some thirty minutes earlier but if it meant leaving school earlier, it worked.

Flash forward to January and I have the opportunity to join my school’s track team. It was a great opportunity to make some friends and show off my running ability. It was exciting, it was a new phase of my high school life, it was awesome, but it was… unfortunately cut short as I threw up and had to go home early. Turns out I was out of shape and quite slow in comparison to the other runners. I wanted to give up and when I told my grandfather everything he laughed. I was confused. I didn’t know what was going through his head but whatever it was, he had thought my situation was laughable. He offered to coach me in how to run track instead of just driving me around, running in the park, and I agreed. Two weeks later I had my first race. A month later I was the fastest runner on my team and by the end of the season, I was the fastest distance runner to ever attend my school.

In my twenty months of running, I would go from a nerdy underclassman to a nerdy upperclassman who could run fast. I like to joke that it was my grandfather's plan all along. His plan was to get me to spend fifteen hours plus a week dedicated to running and change my lifestyle forever to be that of someone obsessing over the next Brooks shoes he can get his hands on. I never would have thought I could be so grateful for someone changing my life in a way that involved so much pain. Pain that brought me many highs of winning and many lows of beating myself up for not. Pain that brought me so much closer to my grandfather. Pain that I feel at Five-thirty in the morning because it's too hot to run in the afternoon. A pain that came with convenience, and it is this pain that changed my life and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.