Nathan Santa Cruz, 17, sits in the Birmingham Candida, wearing headphones before they run on the course of 400 meters in the city section. Attracting his colleagues. Perhaps his smile. Or maybe they want to be near someone who enjoys every day.
Shock He changed his view of life in the fall of 2022 When he suffered from a brain injury in the opening football game in front of the high gun and underwent an emergency surgery to stop the bleeding.
“We don’t know if he will do it,” his mother, Crystal Clark, who is told in the hospital.
Nathan Santa Cruz, who survived a brain injury in 2022, goes to the title of the city section 400 meters away.
(Craig Weston)
Santa Cruz recovered so well that he played two other years of football, but his real love was using his speed in the track. Last season, he finished second in the 400th section in the city. This year, he managed the best professional time of 47.74 seconds in Arcadia Invitational.
On Thursday, he will have a match against Justin Hart from Granada Hills in the 400th final. They ran one last season.
“I think it will be a real competitive race,” said Santa Cruz. “I will try to go out to the top.”
If it does not end first, he has already won. He has a scholarship awaiting him in Cal Polly Pomona, where he plans to study business or criminality. He grew up quickly because of what happened to him. It is not an ordinary teenager when you listen to what he believes.
“At the end of the day, who gives you another opportunity to wake up,” he said. “Make sure I am better than yesterday. That’s what I do.”
Justin Hart from Granada Hills, the son of the former American professional league player, Jason Hart, is preferred in the city 400 and 200.
(Craig Weston)
His rival, Hart, has his own story. He is the son of the basketball coach in Kentucky Jason Hart, who spent 10 years in the American Professional League. The older brother, Jason II, played basketball, but Justin was different.
Justin played a lot of sports, including basketball, but when he was 7 years old, he told his father, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want you to waste your money.”
He wanted to run.
“I didn’t want to be in my father. I wanted to create my own identity in my own sport,” he said.
He won 400 and won second place in 200 in the city final last year. He will go to sweep on Thursday and just began.
“I think the ceiling is really high,” said Granada Hills coach Johnny Welli.
His father and mother in the ovaries will be welcome loudly.
There will be no loser when Hart and Santa Cruz are field. They come from wonderful families and learn lessons that will help them succeed for years to come.
Santa Cruz explains that he runs to make his mother proud because he will never forget the memory of his experience in the hospital.
He said: “She saw her crying in the hospital, I knew that I had to go to make an impact on her life, so she did not have to pay the price of her child to go to the college.” “Seeing her smile, for this reason I do it.”
And when the days do not go as you might want, Santa Cruz said he learned, “It is just the way in which life goes. I think God gives the most difficult battles to his strongest soldiers.”
