Roen Boyd is the most recent South High recipient of the Minneapolis Athena Award, an achievement that serves as “a powerful statement in the belief that these outstanding female athletes have made a difference, and as they go out into the world, they are the type of people who will continue to make a difference and amaze others.” One female senior from each eligible Minneapolis school, including suburbs and private schools, is selected based on “special individual athletic achievement or superior achievements in one or more sports.” On Friday, May 6th, the Athena Awards will hold a luncheon to celebrate the achievements of each of the recipients. 

` On what the award means to her, Boyd said, “Sports have been a big part of my life forever and really important in my family…I’ve also worked really hard in my sports to get to where I am now with them. It really means a lot to me.” She said that her parents have always encouraged her and her brother to be doing different kinds of sports. “I did gymnastics, and they were like, you also need to do a team sport, so you’re building working together skills.”

Boyd has played three sports during her high school career, but has taken a step back from gymnastics to focus on track and soccer this year. She has been a captain in all three sports.  “I’ve been doing gymnastics my whole life, I did tumbling classes when I was super little, and I did that all throughout until high school. Soccer, I did rec soccer when I was little but I was never serious about it. Then I joined South’s team freshman year and that’s when I started to get into it more. [For] track, I started freshman year as well.” She has committed to furthering her education at Macalester College and its NCAA division III track program. 

On her responsibilities being a captain for track and soccer, Boyd said, “For both [teams, my responsibilities would be] leading warmups at practices and at games. For soccer especially, at games I was expected to keep my team encouraged when we were down or even when we weren’t. As a senior and as a captain, it was important to me to be that leader for the younger girls. For track, we had to get everyone signed up on our team snap which is our communication app. I’ve answered questions for people who have just joined track if they are nervous for the first meet, stuff like that.”

Being a captain has benefitted her in other ways too. “It’s definitely made me more comfortable taking up space, I’ve been shy for a long time, and so being a captain put me in this position where I had to step out of my comfort zone and be the center of attention sometimes and be a leader which I hadn’t had the opportunity to do in any other space.”

In her free time, Boyd also does weight lifting and CrossFit. “I don’t weight lift to get better…but I definitely have noticed a difference in my sports with this hobby.” Her initial reaction to winning the award was shock, as she had no idea that she was nominated. “It was in the middle of one of my classes and I was just told to go to the athletic office.” 

She would also like to thank her coaches, Ernest, Matt, and Gabby, for everything they’ve done.