She Has Volleyball Down to A Fine Art
She Has Volleyball Down to A Fine Art
School: Sayre School GRADE: 11th
Sport: Volleyball
Academics: Courtney has a 4.5 GPA, has taken 5 A.P. classes, scored 34 in writing on the ACT and is a volunteer with the Pathfinder service group.
Parents: Natalie & Ted
When it comes to volleyball, Sayre School’s Courtney Mims thinks like a dancer. She’s smooth and graceful on the court and plays almost artistically.
That’s probably because she is artistic. Courtney, a senior-to-be, has danced for years and is the founder and director of her church’s youth dance group, “Praise Ordained.”
She also sings with the Sayre Singers and has formed a group with two friends called “Gifted” that performs spiritual music.
A straight-A student with 4.5 GPA, Courtney is a National Honor Society member and scored 34 on the writing section of the ACT.
She has taken five A.P. classes, won the Sayre Faculty Student and the Yarmuth Book awards.
Equally gifted in math-science and English, she loves writing and will spend a week this summer shadowing a physician (a family friend) at the University of Alabama medical center.
Still, writing is her first love, particularly essays but she also composes poem and writes fiction.
Among her influences are poet Maya Angelou and novelist Joan Didion, but this summer Courtney will downshift to young adult romance stories.
She deserves a respite, given her hectic schedule. Along with volleyball and the rigors of Sayre’s college prep academics, Courtney fills her free time with community service work.
She is a member of Pathfinders, a youth group with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The group reaches out to disadvantaged children, and last year Courtney’s regional conference named her the Youth of the Year.
When her Lexington church elders needed a leader of the youth group, they picked a youth – Courtney assumed the role normally taken by an adult.
The dance group she founded is centered at the church, and her singing group performs at churches throughout the region. She also sings pop, classical and Broadway music with the Sayre Singers.
She works all of this around her volleyball schedule. A starter since ninth grade, Courtney captained last year’s team that posted the school’s first winning record (19-8). She has been Academic All-State three years in a row.
After trying every sport from golf to gymnastics, soccer to swimming, she fell in love with volleyball in middle school and has attended UK summer camps since eighth grade.
Of course, when asked to name her greatest thrill in volleyball, she cited – you guessed it – dancing, particularly her team’s pre-match routine.
You see, when it comes to sports, Courtney thinks like an artist.
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