Triple athlete Myrea Heaps amazes in cross country, dance and track and field
Myrea Heaps running during a race (Photo Courtesy of Myrea Heaps)
By Sofia Yocum, staff writer
A triple athlete in dance, cross country, and track, Myrea Heaps, junior at Maria Carrillo High School, has dedicated her life to pushing herself to be the best she can be.
Heaps started dancing when she was five. It was an on and off sport that she did throughout her childhood and early teenage years. She recently got back into it two years ago when she joined the Advanced Dance Team here at MCHS. Throughout her time on the dance team, Heaps has developed her own method of coming up with choreography for her routines. “It's a long process, we only have less than a month to really put it all together. I try to come up with a song that I want, usually it's just songs that speak to me,” she said. She added that, “I also figure out the meaning of my piece and what I want the audience to get from my piece.” When asked what her favorite part of dance was, Heaps stated, “It's honestly just the people that make the environment fun. I like shows, it makes me so nervous, but it's the adrenaline that makes it really fun.”
At the start of eighth grade, Heaps joined the cross country team. When reflecting on what she thought of cross country at first, Heaps said she hated it. But then she “started training more, little by little. With time you get better, I started seeing improvements in my time, which motivated me to stay on the team.” Cross country takes up most of Heaps time, between summer workouts and only having one day off a week during the season, “we train everyday besides Sundays, sometimes even on Sundays we do our own kind of core.” Heaps says her main motivations for running and being a part of the team at MCHS are“honestly, the people” because “everyone is super nice and I just love running with other people. I don’t like running alone, so it's definitely more motivating to run with others.” Heaps says one person in particular in addition to the people on the team that motivates her is her coach.“When I first met him, I was really slow at cross country, I was starting out with 10 minute paces for three miles. At first I couldn't even run three miles, it was really hard but he had a lot of faith in me and he pushed me to the next level because he saw that potential.”
Heaps started track at the beginning of freshman year. Due to COVID, she was unable to participate earlier, but that does not stop her from doing her best at the sport. Heaps goes into detail about her pre-race process: “The day before I have a race, I do my pre-race workout and then I calculate the times I want for each lap for track.” Equally as important, Heaps tries to motivate herself by “talk[ing] to myself because I know I get pre-race nerves a lot and I know that everyone feels that way too. I just need to remember that I'm capable of this, I've done this before and that I can do it.”
In all, Heaps works hard at each sport and gives them all a large amount of time in her life. Throughout her sports, she has been motivated largely by the community that surrounds her. “I meet a lot of people, and also no matter the grade, everyone's your friend which is super nice because we are all struggling and going through the same pain so we all enjoy that pain together,” she said.