By Henry Sorensen
What do cross country and education have in common? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
It was a brisk Saturday morning, and Taysia Davis, a Dallas native and elementary education student here at the McKay School, watched with nervous excitement as the Men’s and Women’s Cross Country teams both swept the DI team championship titles, a feat that hadn’t been done since 2004.
“Even though I didn’t race this time, I whole-heartedly enjoyed cheering on my teammates and celebrating a historic win with them,” said Taysia.
Taysia wasn’t always going to be in Elementary Education. When she was in ninth grade, she decided she was going to make vaccines at the CDC and work in microbiology. However, the COVID-19 pandemic soured those plans for her.
“When the pandemic hit, my dream career suddenly became both commonplace and controversial, and that made me completely disinterested in microbiology,” she said. “I decided to switch to education."
She confessed that she’s always secretly loved teaching and is very interested in improving public schools and how that positively affects communities. She also loves how “teacher” is a role that Christ has, and one that she can have too. She also talked about how education has affected her running career and vice versa:
“Being in Elementary Education and running has been very challenging, but worth it. Thinking about all the girls out there who have dreams of pursuing collegiate sports has inspired me in my running career, along with discipline and a need for consistency, both attributes that I’ve learned as I’ve learned the role of an educator.”
After running and training with the team all season, Taysia was able to travel with the team to Wisconsin for the championship as an alternate, which she described as bittersweet.
“I’m student-teaching next semester and I won’t be able to compete in Track, so this was my last race,” she explained. “However, I could not have asked for a better ending with my teammates and my coach who I love very much.”