Excelling in the classroom while equally excelling in athletics is not the easiest of tasks, but Colleen Shrum makes it look effortless.
As a junior at Indian Creek, this student-athlete takes the field for fall ball as a member of the varsity field hockey team. The forward started playing field hockey after being introduced to it by her step-mom in third grade. Over the years, Shrum continued to play for the Severna Park Green Hornets, a nonprofit youth sports organization, up until the seventh grade.
Entering her freshman year at Indian Creek, Shrum wanted to stay active and decided to join the cross-country team, but soon realized that wasn't the sport for her. She decided to dust off the cobwebs, pick up her stick, and take another shot at field hockey, landing her a spot on the varsity field hockey team her sophomore and junior years.
“I was okay at it, but it was kind of boring running through the woods against other people,” Shrum admits. “It was hard to do something individually and not have your teammates to help you out.”
During her junior season, the Indian Creek cross country team was short team members, so Shrum decided to help them out by competing in a few cross country meets while continuing her role on the field hockey team.
While field hockey occupies her weekdays, Shrum continues her athleticism competing for Integrity Lacrosse, a club in Anne Arundel County.
“We practice five days a week for field hockey, but I play club lacrosse on the weekends in the fall,” Shrum says. “All of the tournaments for lacrosse are also on the weekends, so it's easy to balance out and not have them overlap.”
Come spring, Shrum trades one stick in for another and transforms into the midfielder on the Indian Creek varsity girl's lacrosse team, which she's been a member of since her freshman year. During this time, her club lacrosse season takes a eak, but picks back up around the end of May for summer tournaments.
During her sophomore season, Indian Creek lacrosse came out victorious over Friends School with a final score of 11–8 in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) B Division, where Shrum finished the game with seven forced turnovers.
“This was a really exciting win because Indian Creek only recently moved up into the B division, which is a big jump,” Shrum explains. “It's just been a transition and to beat Friends School, which is at the top of the B division, was really reassuring that we earned our spot in the division.”
Continuing to succeed on the field, Indian Creek faced Mercy, last season's MIAA B Division champions and, although defeated, Shrum put up three goals and three assists, walking away with six total points.
“Usually when we're playing a better team, I try to turn it on because I want to beat that team and get the whole team together to put up a good effort against them,” Shrum says. “That day, I tried whatever I needed to do, so I was driving in and shooting goals. The last one—I ripped it and it went in. That was awesome.”
Although impressive on the field, Shrum continues to thrive in the classroom with
a cumulative 3.72 GPA. During her sophomore year, she was taking an AP European History class where she scored a four on the final exam. Setting a high academic standard for herself, Shrum is currently enrolled in AP Spanish, AP Language and Composition, AP U.S. History, Biology, Anatomy, and Pre-Calculus.
“You have to learn how to organize everything in a way that gets it done,” Shrum explains. “For me, school comes first, so I organize everything around school. I'm trying to make sure my grades are together so I can get into the colleges that I want to get into. If I have time for sports, which I do because I'm organized, I can do that and then the social life kind of comes and goes.”
While the idea of playing lacrosse at the collegiate level floats around in Shrum's mind, her biggest goal is to find a school where she can study pre-med and eventually fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor.
During her search, Shrum has her eyes on Wofford College, a NCAA Division I university in South Carolina, but is keeping her options open.
“I'm currently deciding if I want to play in college or not because pre-med is a big study and it's definitely a more stressful study than most,” Shrum says. I'm looking for the school where pre-med is first because that's the most important thing to me, but if I can add lacrosse on the side, that'd be cool too.”
