Simon LaBorde '23 Recruiting Profile

Track is my passion, it allows me to feel free, calm, relaxed, and strong. When I win a race, I have a sense of accomplishment, succeeding at doing the thing I feel I was born to do.  But winning takes hard work and repetition to achieve your most impassioned goals. For me, that sense of accomplishment comes not just from the running, but from the mental strength it takes to win.  

In 2015, I was in Spokane for the biggest meet of my life, the Pacific Northwest Junior Olympics. Getting ready to run the 400 meters, it was 108 degrees while I was warming up and negative thoughts were creeping in, like “I can’t run in this heat. What if I don’t make it to the finish line? What if I faint?”  But, as I told myself before every other meet, “don’t think, just run” and that is what I did. I learned that day to find the mental strength to overcome my fears of failure, a lesson that I carry forward to this day, in athletics as well as academics and other areas of my life.

The first key to being successful on and off the track is a growth mindset. Failure leads to success when I view it as an opportunity to learn and grow. The second key is personal responsibility, for my own actions, for schoolwork, and for being an advocate for myself and others. The third key is motivation. How can I motivate myself to work harder for a greater goal when I am not enjoying the moment? I love track and field, and to participate, I need good grades. So, I stay motivated to do the work because I know it is a step along the way to achieving my goals. 

As captain of my Junior and Senior year varsity soccer teams and in my Junior and Senior years of varsity track, I had to earn my teammates’ respect by stepping up to help coaches, help teach skills to teammates, and motivate them to take one step at a time, to keep going. I needed to have a positive mindset to have a positive outcome. And that is why ever since the Junior Olympics, I tell myself every day that as long as I stay focused and keep trying, I will achieve my goals, outside and inside of school.