BY ANSLEY MARKS
Like numerous other students, freshman Isabel Olson attends an after-school activity. Unlike the others though, she then attends another one….and then another one. On top of her regular day-to-day homework for school, Olson participates on the cross-country team each weekday from 4 to 5:30p.m., only to be ferried directly to her dance practice where she dances until 9:00p.m. Yet her schedule does not end there. When she returns home after being gone for the majority of the day, she then digs into extemporaneous speaking, a speech and debate event.
“It’s definitely really challenging trying to balance all my stuff, especially when I have to go home and do my homework and work on extemp,” Olson said.
Somehow able to manage all of her extracurriculars, she is also an ambitious straight-A student.
“She doesn’t sleep. She goes to bed at 12:30 every night because she’s doing homework until then,” freshman Chloe Prendergast, Olson’s close friend, said. “She does so much all the time. She must be so tired, and she gets the same grades as everyone else.”
Olson’s life has always worked long hours to handle the numerous activities. For the first half of her life, Olson religiously focused on gymnastics, working up to 20 hours a week and competing frequently. Gymnastics, however, began to be too much for her during her seventh grade year. She instead began to concentrate on the dancing aspect of gymnastics, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
“I take ballet, jazz, and modern dance and I do point,” Olson said. “[Gymnastics] was my main thing … but it got to be too much so I started dancing and I really like it.”
When Olson was younger, she swam recreationally at Emory over the summers. Similarly to her two older brothers Lukas and Axel Olson, she enjoyed swimming, but she swam more for fun than for the competitive aspect of swimming. Three years ago, Isabel also picked up diving over the summers and has since become more involved in the activity. She said if time allows, she is thinking about doing diving for Grady after her cross-country season terminates.
Olson’s family is supportive of all the activities she has been doing throughout her life, as long as she can stay on top of it all. Friends and family alike admire Isabel for being able to accomplish so much with so few flaws, a feat many much older than she would find difficult. Axel Olson said he takes pride in his younger sister.
“Everything that she’s done so far she’s been good at,” Axel said. “Or she gets better at it because she doesn’t drop out of it immediately like some people would.
Whether Isabel is in the pool, on the field, or at the studio, her supporters will always have high hopes for her.
“Nothing is too hard for Isabel,” Axel said. “She has lots of passion for all the different things she does.”
