Sports Backers ALL Stars spotlight: MWGS’s Lauren Blake

This is one of the main takeaways from the Sports Backers Active Living Leadership ALL Stars program for Maggie Walker senior track and field standout Lauren Blake.

For Blake’s capstone project in the program, her cohort is addressing the need for active living initiatives in retirement and assisted living homes.

Often, active living efforts focus on youth fitness, while older demographics are neglected. So Blake and her peers — members of the village, if you will — have sought to address that void in the community.

“I’ve really enjoyed learning about inequities in the Richmond community. A lot of the program is centered around learning more about how you can reach out in Richmond specifically and make an impact,” she said.

“Through the program, I’ve come to see active living as a more community-based thing where everyone chips in.”

Building camaraderie with her fellow ALL Stars has been perhaps Blake’s favorite aspect of the program, an appreciation which mirrors her track and field experience.

Blake, a sprinter and jumper who enjoys relays and is currently the top-ranked long jumper in her region, grew up playing soccer but made the switch to track at the outset of her high school athletic career.

In this week’s Class 3 indoor meet, the Green Dragons placed second as a team, and Blake took third in the long jump.

Her freshman season was altered by the pandemic, and Blake trained with pods of 15 to 30 athletes after school because the full team couldn’t assemble due to social distancing guidelines.

The smaller group helped Blake feel included and, over time, the track community at Maggie Walker drove her to “come out of (her) shell a lot.”

“I’ve become a lot more outgoing and extroverted from freshman year me to now,” Blake said.

Adversity in the form of injuries proved a roadblock for Blake along that journey.

She’s torn the same meniscus twice now and worked through surgery plus extensive physical therapy. In the early stages of the ALL Stars program, Blake attended workshops on crutches and bearing a brace on her right knee.

As she battled through rehab, PRs were hard to come by. Healthy Lauren had set a high bar that recovering Lauren yearned to achieve.

Improving her times in the 200 meters, in particular, eluded her. After the first meniscus tear, she could not seem to get past her personal best of 27.7 seconds.

Then at a team dinner following a meet her junior year, results came in, and Blake learned she’d finally eclipsed that mark.

“I was crying happy tears, it was a really special moment,” she said.

“All the team came together to support me, that speaks a lot to the track program at Maggie Walker. It’s not super individual, we all celebrate each other’s successes.”

Blake’s mother, Elizabeth, and father, Andrew, have been among her chief mentors, in addition to Green Dragons coaches Ryan Webb, Hall of Famer Jim Holdren and jumping coach Deborah Snagg.

Those individuals proved pillars of the community that was instrumental in uplifting Blake through the adversity of injuries.

“That was pretty discouraging, but I also think I’ve grown a lot from that experience, having to realize I’m going to have to put in the work and hours to get back up to where I was,” she said.

“Then doing it, I’ve actually improved from where I was before. It’s been a really rewarding experience, the way the team’s been there for me throughout that.”

Blake is still waiting to hear back from prospective college destinations, but she hopes to attend an institute which exposes her to diverse backgrounds and opinions which challenge her own world view and help her grow as a thinker.

Her favorite classes are anything related to history, government or civics. She’s particularly interested in how the constitution interacts with contemporary politics, and is currently involved in a mentorship at the General Assembly with Del. Betsy Carr (D-Richmond) with hopes of pursuing a career in politics.