My Dunn St. Croix Scholar Athlete Speech

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

I was invited to give a speech to the student-athletes from the conference I went to high school in. The speech is below-enjoy!

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for having me. It’s really good to be back home, I grew up outside of Colfax and it wasn’t so long ago that I was sitting in a room like this, listening to someone like me talk about who knows what.

I graduated from Colfax High School in 2011. Just like you all, I was a scholar athlete. I was valedictorian of my class, ran cross country/track and played basketball as well. I was asked here today to talk to you about being a scholar athlete-what that means, what that takes, and how I’ve used the skills I learned as a scholar athlete in my life and in my career.

I started running in sixth grade, mostly out of boredom. At the time, I didn’t know what cross country was, but one of my friends asked me to join so I did. I’m really glad I did because I loved running. I loved how free it felt and how strong my body felt after a few months of training. I live in California now, and when I tell people that I graduated high school with 60 people, they can’t believe it. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they make jokes about me growing up in the boondocks, in a tiny redneck town far from…