By Lauren Cole

Mia Wells is a senior at Batavia High School. Sadly, due to her labrum tear, this year she has not been able to participate in most of the sports she loves. But during indoor track season, she has found a new way to stay involved by running the boys and girls track twitter page. She has been very active, doing interviews, athlete profiles, and much more. 

Lauren: What else do you participate in besides track

Mia: “I do cross country, I used to do basketball but I had to quit this year because I was getting my surgery, and then I do track. And then I do National Honor Society, National Spanish Honor Society, I am the vice president of that, and then I do National English Honor Society. I am also involved in Best Buddies, I’m an associate, so you’re with someone in the VTP program and that’s super fun. We just do meetings and hang out and just kind of be friends. I’ve been involved in Student Council for the last four years so that’s always fun.”

Lauren: What is your favorite club you are involved in?

Mia: “Probably FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes), that’s super fun.”

Lauren: How was your experience with Rock the Runway

Mia: “It was just so much fun because making a dress is something I wouldn’t have done, especially if I didn’t tear my labrum and if I wasn’t out because it just gave me time. I like to stay busy and do stuff with my time. And so I just chose to make a dress this year with my two best friends and it was awesome because I got to be creative with it and to try something I’ve never done before. I never made a dress out of non-fabric materials so that was really cool to do that.”

Lauren: What were some of the best parts of running the twitter page?

Mia: “Twitter is fun because I get to be creative with it. Piron just says go for it, and so then I can just make those player profiles, or I can just tweet out those interview videos. I think that’s the best part, just having fun with it.”

Lauren: What are some of your favorite events to cover and who are your favorite athletes to interview?

Mia: “My favorite events to cover are always the relay teams because then I do interviews with them after and that’s always fun. I always get some cool pictures of that. I really like to interview BJ Vines because he always gets really excited to do interviews and he always does really good at the meets so I’m proud of him for that. Piron gets excited so he will help in the interviews. On the girl’s’ side, my favorite person is definitely Amy Bleakley because she gets so excited about it. She always has good answers, and she’s doing really great this year coming out of basketball.”

Lauren: What made you decide to start running it? Did Piron ask you to start running it or did you ask him?

Mia: “During football season, he had me and Katherine Pollock do the football page. One day he was like, what do you think about doing the track page? Automatically I was like, yeah!”

Lauren: Do you feel like it helped you cope with your injury? 

Mia: “Oh, for sure! I wasn’t as bored, I had something to do at the meets and I wanted to be there and I wanted to be interviewing and tweeting.”

Lauren: How do you think your injury has affected you as a runner and as a person? 

Mia: “As a runner, it made me more thankful for running and for being active and all that stuff. But it also showed me that you can easily come back from something, like an injury. It made me stronger, for sure, because being off I realized that I needed more arm strength and more hip strength and all that type of stuff, so I got to focus on that. And as a person, it just made me realize that you can’t define yourself as one thing. For so long I think I defined myself as like an athlete and then once all of a sudden that was taken away from me I realized that I was also a student, a friend, a creative person, and stuff like that.”

Lauren: How does it feel now that you’re cleared?

Mia: “Oh, I’m so happy! The moment I got on the treadmill and started running that was like the coolest thing ever.”

Lauren: Do you think you are going to keep running the twitter page and if not, are you going to hand it off to someone else?

Mia: “Hopefully, I can keep doing it, Mia Gianfrancesco does it with me too because she’s out with a labrum tear too. Hopefully, I can just keep doing it and just keep doing it on my off time because I really like it.” 

Lauren: Do you want to add anything else?

Mia: “Go Bulldogs!”