There’s not much Ariel Okorie can’t do.
“I’m planning to make the hundred hurdles, three-hundred hurdles, high jump and long jump,” she said.
That makes for a busy state meet, but it’s nothing she’s not used to. She’s coming off a year where she was all-state in 100 and 300 hurdles as well as the long jump. She wants to be back there this year, plus the high jump. She also wants to leave Waynesville the record holder in high jump, which currently sits at five feet, six inches.
She’s jumped five feet, four inches.
“It’s literally two inches away,” she said. “You’d think it’d be easy, but it comes with a little bit of hard work.”
Not that she’s afraid of hard work. That’s something that’s been her trademark since she took up track and field in seventh grade.
“It became serious after my first couple of meets of actually doing well,” Okorie said. “My mom was like, ‘Well, I guess you could do this, so I guess let’s try this out for awhile.’ It turned out to be really great.”
“She wants to go full out, all the time,” said head coach Mike Rawlings. “If anything, we’ve got to back her off when it comes time to get into state competition and the conference.”
That attitude has led to a scholarship at Kansas State, where she will do the heptathlon for one of the premiere programs in the country, drawing her closer to her ultimate goal: the American Olympic team.
“She’s a kid that, three years ago, was talking about wanting to go the Olympics,” Rawlings said. “This is a situation where she’s going to be in a program that can propel her to what her ultimate dream is.”
So after one of the most decorated high school careers in Waynesville history, the question is, what is the secret to her success?
“I eat baby food all the time,” she said.
Um. I’m sorry?
It turns out, the summer after Ariel’s sophomore year, her mom got tired of buying fruit that went uneaten, and came up with a… solution.
“My mom was like, ‘I’m wasting all this money buying you all this fruit, so I’m just going to buy you baby food instead and see if it works out,’” Ariel said. “Ever since she bought me baby food, it’s worked out for the best.”
Favorite flavor?
“It has to be peaches, apples and bananas.”
Then, before every race or jump, it’s a sports drink gummy snack.
“I have to eat all six of them, fifteen minutes before the event, or else nothing works,” Ariel said.
Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Ariel Okorie—and her gummy snacks, and her baby food—will head to Kansas State in the fall, and is our latest Arby’s High School Athlete of the Week.
