KU Scholar Athlete of the Month: Colton Warner
Lacrosse Is Only One Of His Many Skills
- School: Henry Clay High
- GRADE: 12
- Sport: Lacrosse
- Academics: Colton has a 4.9 weighted GPA, scored 35 on the ACT, has taken 13 A.P. classes and studied for a semester in Switzerland.
- Parents: Jane & Sloan
Given all that he’s accomplished, it’s hard to believe that Colton Warner of Henry Clay High is only 17 years old. Consider:
He has a 4.9 weighted GPA, scored 35 on the ACT and has taken 13 A.P. classes in the Academy at Henry Clay.
He launched his own non-profit company – Food4Thought KY, which raises money for food donations to the needy. His non-profit hosted a Super Bowl brunch that raised $650.
As one of only 50 American students, he studied for one semester in Switzerland two years ago in the village of Zermatt at the base of the Matterhorn. It was a tech-free semester. No cell phone, no social media, no Internet. To call home, he walked to a pay phone in the local train station.
He wrote all his papers longhand and the same went for letters back home. Along with his studies, the semester featured mountain hiking and skiing.
He volunteered at Henry Clay’s Dance Blue event that raised $7,000 for Kentucky Children’s Hospital.
He spent a month last summer in Alaska as part of the National Outdoor Leadership School where he hiked in the Talkeetna mountains.
He’s both a mentor and a mentee in separate programs at Henry Clay. An aspiring entrepreneur, he works with Toa Green, the founder of Crank and Boom in Lexington.
He also mentors underclassmen as part of the Equity and Advancement Program at Henry Clay.
He’s an avid reader of literary classics by authors such as Hemingway, Salinger, Nabokov and Oscar Wilde.
He has played on three State championship high school lacrosse teams.
He started the sport as a grade-schooler at The Lexington School and found his niche as a defensive midfielder last year when he earned the team’s Most Improved award.
No wonder some of the nation’s top universities have sought Colton – Cornell, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt and Virginia among others.
How does he cram so much activity into each day? He’s more organized than a Swiss watch. “I thrive on structure and I try to work as efficiently as possible.”
That’s why Colton tracks his responsibilities on a whiteboard in his room, erasing tasks as he completes them.
Colton combines his organizational skills with a free-spirited personality, signaled by his long, flowing blond hair.
He’s an enthusiastic supporter of lacrosse, calling it the ultimate team sport.
“It’s all about strategy and communication,” he said. “It’s about sensing what my teammates need and what they need from me.”
