How a Logan Elm senior is juggling six sports
CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio (WCMH) -- Every day after school, Logan Elm High School’s Maggie Wilson begins a sport that is uniquely her own: getting to all of her sports.
"So, I basically live in my car during the season,” she said as she shoved bags around her trunk, digging out shoes, cleats, and jerseys. “Usually everything that is in this bag is sprawled out, but I made it a little more presentable for TV.”
It started her freshman year playing soccer in the fall; and then, another opportunity arose.
"I started doing cross country to stay in shape for soccer,” she said simply.
In the winter, Wilson played basketball.
"And there's not much you can do in addition to basketball," she said.
Moving to the spring, she was on the Braves’ track and field team as a discus thrower; and then, you’ve read this before, another opportunity arose.
"The boys tennis team was a little low on numbers that year, and I’d played tennis on open courts just for fun,” Wilson said. “The coach asked me if I wanted to come out and try it.”
"She was never worried about playing against boys,” Logan Elm boys tennis coach Tony Clouse said. “She was just concerned about being competitive and being a good teammate.”
Last year, her junior year, a final opportunity presented itself and Wilson added a third sport to her fall schedule.
"We were kind of struggling in the special teams game and struggling to find a kicker,” Logan Elm football coach Terry Holbert said. “We were throwing around different ideas and Coach Smith, one of the older coaches on our staff, said, ‘What about Maggie Wilson?’ We kind of pulled her aside and said, ‘See if you can kick this thing through the uprights’ and it was incredible what we found out.”
Now Wilson is a six-sport varsity athlete. She does admit that yes, she gets tired.
“I am human!” she said through laughter.
The thing is, Wilson’s not just playing around out there. She’s playing and getting points, wins and accolades.
"She works her butt off at them,” Logan Elm cross country coach Michael Hartley said. “She is our 16th fastest runner in the history of Logan Elm and that's since 1979."
"She's a regional qualifier in the discus and coming back, she's going to be one of the top kids in the state,” Logan Elm athletic director and discus coach Eric Karshner said.
When Wilson graduates this spring, she’s expected to have accumulated 22 varsity letters in her four years at Logan Elm High School.
She said she doesn’t have a favorite, though.
“I love all of them for different reasons,” she said, adding that each sport helps her succeed at the others. “Going from soccer to basketball, I can tell it helps a lot with my footwork and stuff, and doing all the slides and stuff for basketball helps with boys tennis in the spring, so, a lot of the work I do is coordination, agility, stuff like that.”
It’s not just physical either. Each sport helps her mind stay focused, fit and free.
"Sometimes, one sport can be frustrating, but you go to the next sport and it can be a totally different environment and you can be totally happy,” Wilson said. “I don’t really do a sport outside of the season which is one thing that a lot of athletes do: they focus on one sport all year around. Obviously, I’ve never done that, but I use my other sports as training for the next season.”
And sports is just the beginning. Wilson has a 4.0+ GPA and got a 30 on her ACT which places her in the 94th percentile, according to the latest data from ACT.org. She is also very involved in 4H, Key Club and student union among other school clubs.
"She is the kind of person that makes a community better,” Hartley said. “She doesn't do sports just because she loves them. She looks at all the sports and is like, ‘Where can I help a team?’”
“Don't let what others think stop you from pursuing everything that you want to,” Wilson said. “I had a lot of people when I wanted to do six sports, 'Oh that won't work.' You can really be happy and do everything you want to do.”