El Dorado High's Jackson Waldrum a finalist for Scholar Athlete of the Year.
El Dorado's Waldrum follows successful plan
Sometimes the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. For El Dorado’s Jackson Waldrum, it’s a love of science that has led him to follow in his father’s footsteps to become an engineer.
“He’s been a big influence,” Waldrum said of his father, Kevin, who is the acid production manager at El Dorado Chemical. “He told me, ‘Don’t go into it if you don’t want to do it.’ Engineering is hard and if you don’t have a passion for it, you’re not going to succeed.
“He’s helped me realize that if I want to do it, I have to stick my head down and do it and want to do it. I’ve watched him and have seen what he does. He does a lot of things from his computer, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve asked him more and more about his work. Now that I know what he does, I have a great interest in that, so he’s influenced my decision.”
Waldrum said his favorite subject was biology, and he would like to be either a chemical engineer or biomedical engineer.
“I really want to do something with science and engineering,” Waldrum said. “I really enjoy science classes.”
A pitcher on El Dorado’s baseball team, Waldrum has maintained a 4.0 grade-point average.
“It really means a lot because it prepares you for the future either in the workforce or life in general,” Waldrum said. “It’s sort of like life. You’ve got to work hard and do the best you can.”
Waldrum credited his teachers for growing his interest in science.
“All of the science teachers I’ve had have been great,” Waldrum said. “They’re the best teachers I’ve ever had. They taught me a lot. If I needed help, they would always give it to me. The passion they showed in teaching the thing they
love grew on me, and I started really enjoying it.”
And while his father has certainly had a big influence on him, Jackson’s older brother, Clayton, himself a finalist for Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year back in 2014, has helped prepare Jackson for what college life will be like.
“After graduation, he gave me a lot of advice in preparing for college,” Waldrum said. “He’s been there to motivate me, talk to me and given me advice on things. He’s really helped because he’s always pushed me to do the best I can. He wants me to do good.”
Jackson will be joining Clayton at the University of Arkansas in the fall, and while one could make the assumption that they have opposite tastes in sports considering Clayton starred in football and Jackson recently completed his baseball career, Jackson said that is far from the case.
“We’re just about the same, really,” Waldrum said. “We were a lot alike growing up. People couldn’t really tell us apart most of the time. We like to golf together a lot. He liked baseball, but he never got into it as much as I did. His real passion was football. I liked football, but it wasn’t for me. It’s not that we didn’t like it, it’s just that as we got older and more involved, it required more and more, and we figured out which one was more suited for us. We loved sports and playing as many as we could. Anything we could do, we would try to do because we liked competing with each other.”
Off the field, Waldrum has done work with Habitat for Humanity and the Agape House, and he drew his inspiration for volunteer work from NBA great Steve Nash, who is renown for his charity work.
“I did some volunteer work out at the Agape House,” Waldrum said. “There were little kids out there that were a lot less fortunate than I was. They’re really sweet kids that were dealt a tough hand. You get to hang out with them, and you make their day by going out there and throwing the ball with them, playing basketball with them, running around with them, talking to them or helping them with their homework. They seem to really appreciate that because they came from a home where they didn’t have that.
“Me and my dad built a house for Habitat for Humanity. That one was fun because it was the first time I ever got to figure out how a house got put together. It’s pretty rewarding, and I love to do it. A lot of people are less fortunate than you. I think it’s a big world, and one of the best things you can do is have an impact on someone else’s life.”
Inspiration can also come from a different setting.
In his junior year, Waldrum got the call to enter the Wildcats’ first-round game against Searcy in the 6A State Tournament with the bases loaded and nobody out in the opening inning.
Although the Wildcats went on to lose 7-3, Waldrum kept El Dorado in the game, allowing six hits and two runs in five innings of work, and that outing has stayed with him.
“I had pitched in games, but not with that amount of pressure where it was win or go home,” Waldrum said. “It really showed me how to handle pressure, and that I could do it. You’ve just got to relax, have fun and seize the moment. When you have an opportunity like that, take it and run with it. That was one of the big turning points for me.”