Jennifer Healy…A Balanced Life
The focus is on the parking lot at Kellam High School. It’s a cold, 45 degree early winter day with the leaves from autumn partially covering the ground but most still decorating the trees in the distance, December 7, 2005 to be exact. Now it’s 2:45PM and the buses from two rival high schools are starting to arrive. A three school indoor track and field event is beginning to unfold. Even though all events will take place outdoors, technically it is called indoor track. Both male and female athletes are filing off the buses and exiting from the school locker rooms covered from head to toe in jackets, gloves and sweat suits trying to keep warm. The field comes alive in no-time-at-all with sprinters, pole-vaulters, high-jumpers, hurdlers, and distance runners all starting to stretch and jog to get loose and heat up their muscles.
This is where we will attempt to find Jennifer Healey, one of Kellam’s star female athletes. Looking for her on the field among all the other athletes in sweat suits was very confusing. So we stopped someone who looked like a coach, and they were just that, only from one of the rival schools there to compete. When asked if he knew of Jennifer Healey he immediately pointed her out and commented how much he respected her for her athletic abilities.
While waiting for Jennifer to finish her warm-up routine, we found her parents, Joe and Jill Healey, on the side lines volunteering to help wherever they were needed. Talking to her father, we find out Jennifer is following in her brother’s footsteps when it comes to playing sports. Jennifer has been inspired by her brother, John, who was also an outstanding athlete at Kellam High School and went on to be ranked in the top sixty out of four thousand athletes at a recent NIKE Sports Camp, but that’s a whole ‘nother story!
As we approach Jennifer, she greets us with a beautiful smile. Like all great athletes we’ve had the pleasure of meeting, her personality from the very moment we met was charming, warm and friendly, even with all she was preparing for in this tri-school track and field competition.
We discovered that Jennifer first started competing in school and summer track events in the fifth grade. According to her mother, Jill Healey, Jennifer was in the 5th grade when she saw a flyer about track events being handed out in her elementary school. Jennifer brought it home to show her parents and excitedly asked them if she could try out. Track has been a passion with Jennifer ever since.
Jennifer’s strongest events are the 55 yard hurdles, the long jump and the triple jump. When asked about her exercise workout routine, she replies, “The coach wants me to do 300 sit-ups a night,” but with a big sheepish grin and a twinkle in her eye which says she knows she should be doing them, she truthfully admits, “I haven’t quite got there yet.”
Going into her freshman year, Jennifer ethusiastically entered the Heptathlon, a grueling seven event competition where she respectably placed 14th. Entering again just before her sophomore year, she soared this time into 8th place. At the end of her sophomore year, Jennifer placed All State in the hurdles event and also earned a place in the Junior Olympics.
Now that Jennifer is in her junior year and college is looming on the horizon, she sees that being good in a particular sport can be a tremendous advantage when thinking about scholarships. This is a major benefit coaches have been pointing out to her all along. At this time in her life, she finds herself making serious decisions concerning how the sport of track, which she’s been so focused on and so passionate about in the past, fits into her lifestyle for the future. As a National Honor Society student maintaining her grades are important to her and so is continuing to participate in her church’s youth activities. Jennifer is looking for a good balance in her life. A balance that will allow her to participate in all these things of which she is passionate. Meanwhile, Jennifer continues to excel in track competitions, in her scholastic achievements and in the unselfish devotion of her time to church activities.
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