There are a lot of stars in all of the sports here on campus, but there’s one star that’ll have the spotlight right now. Chelsea Jauregui, a recordbreaker in cross country and in multiple other sports, gaining a 519 new record and breaking the record for the 4×800 meter in track, but now has to bid adieu to Ridgeview’s campus as she moves on with her life and continue to stride to do great things.
When asked about graduation, Jauregui said that she had a mix of emotions, and also already mostly had her nearby future set out for her. “I’m going to be continuing running track in cross country at my university. I will be attending the University of Redlands this fall, studying to become a speech pathologist,” she says. She’s already written the next couple of chapters of her story, knowing well what it will be about and her place in the universe, so to speak.
While excited for graduation though, she does feel sad and a bit nervous about adjusting to being by herself. In a way, the independence was gratifying but at the exact same time completely terrifying. “Obviously, you’re getting too much independence, so you feel excited about it, but also, it’s not always a good thing, ‘cause then… you’re still learning about yourself, so you might not always use that independence wisely,” she states.
While in her time at Ridgeview, she was in tennis at the very beginning, but quit and joined track, and cross country for her last two years, and in those two years, she grew and changed quite a bit. One of the cross country coaches, and also one of the track coaches, Triandous Hobson had the chance to see that change first hand, and loved having Jauregui a part of both sports. “I think she was always a talented fast runner. She just gained more confidence, which is what I think you need in the sport. So I think you just grew to learn that. It’s not her competing against other people. She was always competing against herself. And so I think she learned to believe in herself more…It was 100% mental,” says Hobson.
He also believes that Jauregui will be remembered for a while here, and thinks she made a very good impact on this campus, but that it also wasn’t easy to be able to. “I think she’s…to me, the idea that, you can fall in love with anything…I think she will be remembered just by even freshman for knowing that, like, all it takes is a year or two of just hard work and you can change your whole entire life,” he mentions. And Jauregui even acknowledged herself that her balancing of everything wasn’t very easy. “There’s no perfect schedule you can make that would give you eight hours of sleep…Getting all your homework done in one night, like, it’s just not realistic,” she says.
Jauregui will most likely be remembered here for a while, given her new set records and also with the impact she’s made in the sports she participated in. And as graduation draws nearer, she prepares for her future, still pursuing track and cross country, and making her name in the large world, which Hobson said himself, could be her oyster.
