Photo by: Laura Wuthnow
Blog by: Margarita Araiza
Student Spotlight is a new blog by Mararita Araiza featuring an individual student and what makes them a great part of Oak Park. Have suggestions for another student who deserves the spotlight? Leave a comment below.
Imagine the scorching hot sun burning deep into your skin, sweat streaming down your face, back, everywhere, and parents, coaches, kids yelling at you like a pack of mad dogs.
Getting paid $18 an hour if she is a center referee (head referee) or $12-$13 if side assistant referee sounds like good pay for a high school student if you ask anyone. It might even seem like a little bit too much, but just think, all the exercise, the yelling, the weather you have to deal with, and then you think what perfect pay it is.
Junior Emily Ballard, knows what it means to stay calm under pressure and to keep emotions in tact dealing with all the hardships soccer referring comes with. Refereeing boy’s and girls’ soccer for about 2 years now, she still has trouble with all the pressure. If parents start yelling because of a “bad call” she might have made, she must double check her decision with the other referees, and yet she says, “I let it bother me all week long.” Refereeing is a difficult job for someone to handle and yet Ballard handles this with such a great attitude. Maybe that’s why she’s been working there for so long. You need a good attitude.
Not only is she a referee on the weekends working 14 hours in two days, but she is also a straight A student taking challenge classes, and a great person with helping her classmates if they need help with anything. It doesn’t stop there though. This past summer she was a volunteer at North Kansas City Hospital and New Mark Care Center Nursing Home helping and learning.
While teenagers stay out partying, taking high school easy getting awful grades, and depending on their parents, Ballard has volunteered for her community and has even bought herself a car with her own sweat and hard work, Ballard says, “It makes me appreciate it and care for it even more.”
Wanting to be in the medical field, refereeing will most definitely bring her very good preparation for what she has to deal with as a doctor or surgeon. Ballard will know how to make quick deciding calls, and will know how to keep her emotions controlled and keep on working saving lives.
“There is always always, always something to be thankful for,” Ballard said. She takes advantage of every second of her life and doesn’t let anything go to waste. Senior Emily Ballard is definitely a person to look up to and appreciate, and will go so far in life. Senior Emily Juhl screamed, “Emily Ballard for president.”
Her friends and classmates even know she will go far.