Excellence in athletics and academics inextricably connected for Subway Head of the Class alumnus
LORENZO SMITH, A STUDENT-ATHLETE HIGH SCHOOL VALEDICTORIAN, HEADING TO MEDICAL SCHOOL AT UBC THIS FALL
Perhaps the best way to sum up Lorenzo Smith’s five-year mantra as a Simon Fraser Clan student-athlete is to say that anything worthy of a dogged pursuit will remain forever elusive without a daily dose of passion and purpose.
From the moment he first graced the pages of The Province as a member of Subway’s 2012 Head of the Class as one of our studentathlete valedictorians, the graduate of Chilliwack’s G.W. Graham Secondary seemed to so succinctly define the connective relevance between excellence in athletics and academics.
“Beyond the fact that exercise, in and of itself, is helpful for any academic pursuit, it’s about the attitude with which I approach running and the attitude with which I approach academics and life in general,” Smith told The Province in a 2016 article that centred around his 4.20 grade-point-average in biomedical physiology, just 0.13 off a perfect A-plus. “There is so much crossover.”
As we spend this week revisiting with past honorees, it bears mentioning that the attitude of which Smith speaks is the defining commonality of not only our 18-year-old Head of the Class community, but anyone who sees the connection between discipline and results.
In fact, when Smith enjoyed what was perhaps the most rewarding day of his young life earlier this month, getting the news that he had been officially accepted into UBC medical school this fall, the crossover between his two passions with instantaneous.
“My gut instinct was to go for a celebratory run, but I’m a little injured right now so I couldn’t,” laughed Smith, who competed for SFU’s cross-country, and trackand-field teams. “So I did the next best thing. I went for a mountainbike ride.”
Pedaling up on Burnaby Mountain, the place he has called home since freshman year, offers no shortage of rough terrain.
And while that’s also a good way to describe the path all studentathletes must take, Smith’s thoughtful takes on what the university experience has meant to him, coupled with his charismatic ability as a public speaker, made him something of an advocate for and an inspiration to his student body.
“Academics, for me, it’s not about who is the smartest or who has the most ability,” Smith said. “It’s very much about discipline and dedication and study habits. You need to cultivate faithfulness, you need to cultivate a discipline and a drive to put the work in every day in order to achieve big things.”
Distilled to its essence, that is passion and purpose personified.
Last June, four years removed from his own valedictory commencement speech at G.W. Graham, Smith was invited back to address his former high school’s class of 2016 graduates.
“You look back at them and in a strange way, you see yourself,” Smith remarked of the experience. “The theatre is familiar, the teachers are all still there. Everything is familiar except now you’re the one speaking on the stage.”
For Lorenzo Smith, who will keep finding new trails to traverse once medical school begins in the fall, it was the first of what are likely many more full-circle moments to come.
Each begins with a head-first leap into the great unknown. And each, it appears, ends with another measure of the growth, the wisdom and the truth he has always sought.