Striving for excellence

MOSES LAKE — As a 16-year-old junior at Moses Lake High School, Megan Frederick is a very studious and zealous member of the community.

She strives for excellence in academics, sports, and every activity she is involved in. Her extracurricular activities include Key Club historian, secretary of Honor Society, soccer, basketball and tennis.

As historian for Key Club, Megan makes the yearly scrapbook and as secretary for Honor Society, she creates the club's meeting agenda, takes notes of the meetings and takes attendance. She has challenged herself by taking honors classes, such as geometry, physical science, English and biology. She is also taking English and environmental science senior classes this semester, which she plans on gaining college credits in by passing the cumulative exam.

Despite such a busy schedule, Frederick is able to maintain a 3.9 grade-point-average, as well as a cheery, positive attitude. Despite her excellence and talent in all her classes, Frederick's favorite subject is math. She also enjoyes interior design, which allowes her to work freely with her own artistic ideas. Her talents in mathematics and style resulted in her wish to become an architectural engineer. She thinks it would suit her perfectly.

"It is a job that is based on both math and creativity," she said.

Frederick's academic aspirations are only rivaled with her dedication to sports. In the fall, she plays varsity soccer as co-captain with Alexis Ballinger and Brin Bergeson. They are advancing to playoffs.

As a captain, Megan has worked hard this season to get her team to the playoffs, as a tribute to Bergeson, senior co-captain. Frederick's skill and hard work earned her honorable mention for the Big Nine in soccer last year. In the winter, she plays varsity basketball. Practices are two and a half hours and games are often three times a week. With basketball's hectic schedule, she finds time to participate in the Key Club fund-raisers and keep up her grades. Her positive attitude is displayed through her good sportsmanship on the basketball court. Megan played tennis during the spring of her sophomore year, and plans on continuing. Her boyfriend, Sam, sparked her interest in it the previous summer.

"It's great hobby that can be approached seriously and competitively but can also be less stressful than other sports," she said.

Time not spent studying or at sports practice, is spent either relaxing with friends and family or catching up with her boyfriend over the phone. Her boyfriend of eight months, Sam Johnson, graduated from Moses Lake High School last June and is a freshman at LeHigh University in Pennsylvania majoring in astrophysics. They remain a strong couple, despite the separation of seven states. They met at the beginning of Frederick's sophomore year, while Johnson was the sports medicine trainer for her soccer team.

When she feels overwhelmed with her workload, Frederick has a great support system comprised of family and friends. Frederick's easy-going personality draws people to her. Her mother teaches 6th grade science at Chief Moses Middle School and her dad teaches science at the high school. Her sister, Kristen, is a junior at Eastern Washington University majoring in elementary education as well. Every chance she gets, Frederick visits her sister and maintains a close relationship.

"Now that we don't live together, we're extremely close and have a lot of the same interests; especially shopping," she said.

By far, Frederick's favorite extracurricular activity is attending school dances. After winning her most recent soccer game, she attended the Homecoming dance. She had fun with her date and is looking forward to more dances. Other favorites of hers include: bread, cheesecake, white chocolate mochas, the movie "Pocahontas," and the "Golden Girls." Her taste in music ranges from country to rap. She loves to sing and performed as Annie in a play at Discover Elementary School. She was in 6th grade and dyed her hair red to fit the role.

Even though she has never been to Paris, Frederick has a fascination with the "city of love." Her room is decorated with the Eiffel Tower, she wears an Eiffel Tower necklace and looks for Eiffel Tower trinkets when she shops.

"I'm determined to visit Paris, though I can't point out anything specific that makes it so fascinating to me," she said.

This past summer, Frederick went through a week-long bike riding camp. She completed the 300 mile-long trek through Centennial Trail in Idaho. The next week, she attended Camp Reed in Spokane. She spent the week building fences, making trails and doing service projects. Both camps were for counselors in training, and she plans on being a junior counselor at Camp Reed next summer.

Every weekend this past summer, she and Ballenger cleaned offices to earn spending money. When not busy, Frederick spends her summers with friends on the lake or hanging out with her boyfriend.

An accomplishment Frederick takes pride in is the fact she is able to continue in sports after injuring her ankle in an eighth grade basketball game and now has tendentious. She tore four ligaments, had three bruised bones and a bone spur. She wore a foot brace but continued to participate in sports. Consequently, she continued to injure it and had to wear a cast for three months. For a while after the initial injury, she couldn't compete in sports. Through rehab and self-determination, she returned to soccer and basketball, earning a varsity spot for soccer and starting junior varsity for basketball.

Frederick is a very determined individual who pushes herself to be successful in all aspects of life, while enjoying her high school years.