A Mover And A Shaker
Tompkins makes fast transition to new school, new sport
(Editor's Note: This is the ninth in a series highlighting the finalists for NewsTimes Scholar-Athlete of the Year. The finalists will be honored and the winner announced at the News-Times ScholarAthlete Awards Banquet on Thursday.)
Moving from one part of the country to another can be an eye-opening experience.
El Dorado’s Derek Tompkins knows firsthand, having moved from Pennsylvania to El Dorado, but the soccer and tennis standout deftly handled the transition, graduating with a 4.16 grade-point average while going from a beginner in tennis to reaching the state tournament.
Tompkins said he went through culture shock when he first arrived in El Dorado three years ago, but he adapted.
“I had lived in Pennsylvania my whole life, so I was only used to what goes on in Pennsylvania,” Tompkins said. “When I moved down here, it was very different. Getting used to the diversity was a little hard at first, but I got used to it.”
Prior to moving to El Dorado, Tompkins resided in South Williamsport, home of the Little
League World Series.
At that time, soccer was the only sport Tompkins played.
“I played at a 2A school,” Tompkins said. “We only had about 100, 150 kids in each grade, so we weren’t big. We had to do fundraisers for our money.”
Tennis didn’t come into the picture until his junior year at El Dorado.
“I had a friend who wanted to play tennis, and he asked me a few times to come out there and play with him to practice so he could get better,” Tompkins said. “I would go out there with him, and I eventually started beating him, and he said, ‘You should come play,’ and I was like, ‘All right, I will.’ I knew the coach (Wayne Garner) because I had his class in my 10th grade year, and he really liked me.
“I tried out and he put me on the team. I worked my way up, but I didn’t play very much. I went out and played with my friend Gary Gauthier, and when the season came around, I was No. 1 or No. 2 doubles at first, but it wasn’t working out and we weren’t doing too well, so he put me with Gary, and we did very well. We went to conference and took fourth place in doubles and qualified for state.”
Having just started to play the sport, getting a chance to play in the state tournament was something that Tompkins didn’t foresee happening.
“I did not expect it,” Tompkins said. “They had told me that in the previous year, there was a great doubles team (Nathan Oliver and Blake Thornton), and they had lost in the first round of conference, so I was a little scared of what was going to happen, but for my first real year of playing tennis, I thought I did pretty well with making it to state.”
With his career at El Dorado now completed, Tompkins will be leaving Arkansas to attend Coastal Carolina.
“I’m a person that looks for the major and then picks the college, not college than the major,” Tompkins said. “My mom knew someone who worked there, so we checked it out on our way up to Pennsylvania to visit family.
“We went and toured it because I was originally planning on going into engineering and science or something with physics. When I got there, I toured the college, and I really liked it. I found a program there called intelligence and national security, which is my intended major.
“I applied for it and got accepted. You’ve got to have a certain GPA. I just fell in love with the college. It was almost like being on vacation. It just felt so nice. You’re 9 miles from the beach, and there’s plenty to do.”
Although Tompkins said he likes math, he elected to go another route with his career choice.
“I like math, but I thought if I did intelligence and national security, I could be an analyst and I could be looking through stuff, looking for patterns and solving problems,” Tompkins said.
One aspect from being a multi-sport athlete having to juggle classes in high school that will help Tompkins transition to college is time management.
“There were nights I wouldn’t get home until
11:30 or 12 o’clock and then I would have to do my project or my homework for the next day,” Tompkins said. “It was challenging, but I know it will help me in college with time management and getting my work done.”
Tompkins said his drive to succeed in the classroom comes from his mother.
“She was a straight-A student in high school,” Tompkins said. “I wanted to strive to be as good as her.”
But perhaps what’s most impressive about Tompkins is that he posted his 4.16 grade-point average against students that were older.
“I started a year early, so I’m competing with people who are a year older than me,” said Tompkins, who won’t turn 18 until October.
Given how much his life has changed since moving to El Dorado, Tompkins said he surprised himself with his performance in the classroom.
“I never would have expected to have a 4.16 GPA and all these honors,” Tompkins said.