WXXV Student Athlete of Week: Pascagoula High’s Naomi Smith

Every Thursday on WXXV, we have the great honor of highlighting high school athletes along our beautiful Gulf Coast.

When looking over the submissions for Student Athlete of the Week, it isn’t out of the ordinary that we come across extremely talented dual-sport athletes, but very rarely do we come across an athlete that’s as busy as this one.

Introducing Miss Do It All, Pascagoula High School’s Naomi Smith.

The sophomore might as well have gills for the amount of time she spends in the water and she wants others to know that being a competitive swimmer is more than just swimming laps. “I feel like swimming isn’t really seen all that much as a hard sport I guess, and every single time someone is like, “you’re on the swim team?” and I’m like yes it uses every muscle! That’s the thing, it uses every muscle in the body and you really have to have control over everything and it’s just something that is overlooked by a lot of people, and I think people should really look into it.”

After participating in the South State meet last week, Smith took home first place in both the 200 individual medley and the 100-meter butterfly.

Those two accomplishments landed her into the state championship meet in Tupelo this Saturday, where she’ll be competing in those two elements along with some relays.

Her endurance in the lanes quickly transitions into adrenaline towards the pit as Smith also competes in pole vaulting for the Panthers. “It’s a really fun thing to do. I’m more of an adrenaline kind of person, so going up on the pole and coming back down is just a lot of fun to me. Honestly the only thing that runs through my head is don’t knock it down.”

Just when you think her Panthers Pride is enough, one day she casually decides to pick up some drum sticks and the rest is history. “I was “Wow, those sticks look really cool! Let me have a pair!” so I picked up a pair and started fiddling around and I was like this is what I want to do. After I started doing both, I was like oh my gosh that’s so cool because I can read notes, I can read rhythms, and it’s just stuff that ties into each other and I can really understand music as a whole and I can understand it as a percussion.”

As you can imagine, Smith is quite busy as a tenth grader and she just got her license last week!

Besides the ability to use transportation on her own now, the only way she’s able to juggle all these things plus being active in multiple clubs is communication. “I wake up at six o’clock in the morning, I come in early the morning, do all my class work in class, yes all the time, and then after school I have band and then I’ll come to swim practice. Sometimes those days are really stressful, some days it’s very overwhelming and I don’t know what to do with it, but I can talk to Coach Redcliff or talk to Coach Q and it’s just amazing how they feel like such a family to me because I know I can go and talk to these people and it’s like the stress goes away.”

She also says her love for music and percussion also act as an escape when she feels like she has nowhere else to go. “Say I go home upset right, and I can’t go play on the drum at 9 o’clock at night. I might go on the keyboard and put a drum setting on there and start doing that or I’ll write some kind of drum set to a song that I’ll be listening to.”

But ultimately, what really gets Smith through the busyness and stress is her support system who always has her back. “Honestly I couldn’t have done it alone, so me as a person now, I’m looking back like it makes me feel like I want to be a better person when I know that these people here have helped me get where I’ve come now, and it’s just like I really want to spread how that makes me feel to others so that’s what I’m working towards.”

Although her schedule may be crazy and at times, she feels like she may be spread too thin, Smith says she wouldn’t have it any other way and wishes more people would get out of their comfort zones. “There are just some people that I feel like don’t have the motivation to try new things and I think they really should because I would have never tried swimming if I didn’t see my brothers swimming, and I never would’ve tried pole vaulting if I didn’t see my friends pole vaulting, or if I didn’t have anyone say, “You’d be really good at this.” I guess I’m just saying don’t be afraid to try new things.”