Tatiana Rivas '24 Recruiting Profile

To give a background on my academic profile, I am graduating high school a year early as a Junior due to completing my high school requirements as well as my Associate’s degree requirements via dual enrollment. I discovered my need to graduate early from high school at the beginning of May 2024 when I audited my degree requirements for my dual enrollment courses. I was not previously aware that I had met the requirements to complete AAS-Direct Transfer since it was my first school year registered as a dual enrollment student. I have taken Honors and AP courses at the high school level apart from my dual enrollment courses. I have a current unweighted GPA of 3.2 and college unweighted GPA of 3.6. I scored a 22 on my ACT and 1190 on my SAT. 

Now, when it comes to Track and Field, I was first introduced to this sport my freshman year of high school when I was trying to fulfill my P.E. requirements. The first event I tried was hurdles and I fell in love. I self taught myself freshman season because we did not have a hurdles or sprint coach. At the end of the season, I joined a club track team and continued my training over the summer with coaching and guidance. That year (2022), I qualified for USATF Junior Olympic Regionals. Since then, I have actively continued to compete at the high school level and well as with the club team for indoor and summer outdoor seasons. I also amplified my events to include Long Jump. In May 2023, I competed at the Pacific Coast Shockwaves Invitational in Long Beach and earned a silver medal for hurdles.

I was actively progressing and improving my times until around December 2022, when I suffered an injury to my Achilles and a stress fracture on the top of my foot. The injury was due to being in two sports at the same time (high school dance and club track) which caused me to strain and overwork my foot. Since I did not have any downtime to recover, my injury progressed and it affected my performance and ability to improve my times. After completing physical therapy for about 5 months starting in October 2023, I was cleared to return to run right at the beginning of my most recent high school season (March 2024). 

As can be seen in my times for the 2024 high school season, I have steadily started to regain momentum in hitting a PR for my events, primarily hurdles which I just competed two weeks ago at the KingCo 4A League Championships. I also qualified for the KingCo championships during the 2023 season, but was unable to compete due to my injury. For 2024, during the last two regular season track meets I also competed as part of the 4x100 relay as third leg. While a split time was not provided by the meet organizers, taking into account the best times ran by my teammates in the 100m, my split time for the 100m should be a PR between 13.16 and 13.37.  I competed at the Pasadena Running Roses Invitational (Pasadena, CA) May 18, 2024 and had a PR in my long jump of 14ft 5.25in. I will continue to train and compete throughout this summer with my track club.

The hinderance I had due to my injury has now fully healed. I am the type of athlete that likes to receive feedback and corrections and then actively applies the changes provided by the coach. Even if it is a good race, I also like to debrief to determine the good, bad, and room for improvement. I am passionate and committed to track and would love the opportunity to continue this sport during my collegiate years. If given the opportunity to be part of your team, I know that I will represent the team in the best way possible and continue to strive for improvement on my times and jumps.