With all the irons she has in the fire at Herington High School, it might seem a little strange that Sophia Weber calls herself “very much a tunnel-vision person.”
 
After all, if it’s a club or sport offered at Herington, chances are Weber is involved somehow. In the Railer junior’s mind, “that’s how we can have opportunities at a school our size.”
 
So she plays sports, competing in volleyball in the fall, basketball in the winter and golf on the boys’ team in the spring.
 
Away from the sports arena, Weber is even more involved. She’s competed in forensics and scholars bowl, is involved in FCCLA (Family Career and Community Leaders of America), HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America) and FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America), serves on the KSHSAA Student Advisory Board as the Class 2A female representative and has been her class president three years running. In FBLA, Weber holds offices at the state (president) and national (Mountain Plains Region vice president) level.
 

 
It's a lot on her plate, but she has found a way to make it work.
 
“I wouldn’t say it’s easy,” she said. “You definitely have to be organized – it’s essential to do everything. It’s so important I have my tasks outlined and know exactly what I have to do each day.”
 
While her experiences in each of her varying activities have helped shape her, they’ve also been a revelation for Weber – this week’s CapFed® True Blue® Student of the Week. And it’s something she deems important for her peers to embrace.
 
“One thing I’ve learned and definitely my advice to high school students is to find your purpose as early as possible,” Weber said. “I think the problem is so many high school students get burned out because they’re investing time and energy in things that don’t truly drive them or excite them.”
 
Ahhh, there’s the tunnel vision Weber alluded to. And anyone who knows Weber for any amount of time knows that trait to be true.
 
“She’s a go-getter for sure,” Herington English teacher Chesney Clark said. “She’s always been that kid that you just can rely on and know she’s going to be there and get things done. She sees something she wants to accomplish and she goes after it to make it happen.”
 
That’s perhaps never been more apparent than this year.
 
But first, some background. Sports have always been a huge part of Weber’s life ever since her parents, Vernon and Mary, adopted her from an Ethiopian orphanage when she was 2 years old.
 
With older brothers participating in a wide variety of sports, many of them coached by Vernon, Sophia tagged along to countless games and soaked it all up. When she wasn’t watching her brothers compete, Sophia was watching sports at home with her family. 
 
Through it all, Weber knew she wanted to follow a sports-related career path.
 
“I always knew that I wanted to do something involved in sports,” she said. “Through the years, it transitioned a lot. If you would have asked me in middle school, I would have said athletic trainer. Then I thought maybe I’d want to do coaching. My dad coached all my brothers and with coaching, having that ability to transform lives, help those young players grow, that was on my mind.
 
“I just always knew I wanted to be down on the field, in that atmosphere and part of that culture with a team.”
 
Part of that desire is Weber’s other defining personality trait. She’s a people person. Big time.
 
“I’ve always been so outgoing – you can ask anybody who’s known me since I was little,” she said. “I’ve never been afraid to go up to somebody new. Meeting new people is just one of my favorite things. Like I love to fly Southwest because you get seated by random people and I love that. You never know who is going to be a momentary person that can change your life. That’s my mindset whenever I meet somebody new. It could be someone who has a real impact on my life.”
 
Herington business teacher, volleyball coach and FBLA sponsor Lisa Beye recognized that in Weber at an early age.
 
“I’ve known her pretty much her whole life and that’s just who she is,” she said. “She's not afraid to put herself out there. I've taken her to a lot of leadership workshops and usually she’s right up there with the guest speaker, talking to them. I can see her being a motivational speaker some day. She’s just a pretty neat kid.”
 
At some point, it clicked with Weber. Her love of sports. Her interest in people. Her outgoing nature. It all pointed toward a goal that now has become Weber’s purpose.
 
She wants a career in broadcast journalism, specifically in sports media.
 

 
“That’s literally my dream job – talking to players and interview coaches, build those relationships – that’s everything I could ask for and more,” Weber said. “I knew that broadcast journalism and sports media combined things I love – sports and just being able to talk to people. I love the idea of getting to interview people and share their stories. I love being able to give people the recognition they deserve for the great things they were doing. There are so many people out there that have these stories that haven’t been uncovered yet. They deserve to be put in the light and I would love to be the one to do that and share their stories.”
 
Her purpose identified, Weber has spent this year setting things in motion to make it happen.
 
“Once I set a goal and I see a path, I’m full-speed ahead,” she said. “There’s no brakes.”
 
Only there really wasn’t a clear path for Weber's purpose laid out at Herington, which doesn’t offer a journalism class in its high school curriculum.
 
No problem. Weber approached Clark about the idea of starting a broadcasting club. It just so happened that Clark had been charged with manning a re-design project to promote all the good things going on in the Herington school district. 
 
And just like that, a spark was lit.
 
“I approached her and was excited about it, and when she sees a student excited about something, she gets excited about it,” Weber said. “We were immediately bouncing ideas off each other and just kept getting each other so excited. We had no grants, no money, no idea of what we were going to do at all, but we just started bouncing ideas off each other and had such a passion about it. We’d rather have failure than regret trying, so it was just, ‘Let’s do this.’”
 
“As a teacher and sponsor my job is more than just teaching the kids content,” Clark said. “I have to give them whatever I can for them to be successful. When someone like Sophia comes to me and is like, 'I really want to do journalism, but we don't have anything,' I'm like, 'OK, let's do it. What can I do to help you?' Kids like Sophia, it's easy to help them and want the best for them because they give you their best and do everything they can to help themselves."
 
Herington principal Mark Paul connected Clark and Weber with an application for a $1,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Dickinson County. They received it, as well as another $1,200 grant from Mahaska Bottling Company, Herington’s concessions vendor, through their Do-the-Dew program.
 
With the money, Herington was able to purchase audio and video equipment necessary to make the broadcasting club a reality.
 
“I don’t think anybody expected it to get this far,” Weber said. “It was kind of a crazy idea that we had and Mrs. Clark and Mr. Paul gave me a chance to build this idea instead of having it just be words.”
 
The equipment arrived right before the start of Herington’s preseason basketball tournament and Weber and her classmates hit the ground running, albeit with some early hiccups. In filming their first game broadcast, they forgot to turn on the microphone.
 
While the club was Weber's dream, she quickly spread her enthusiasm among her classmates. Roughly 10 of her classmates began the journey with her and the numbers have expanded to more than 20 students involved in one capacity or another.
 
“We’ve got boys in our class that normally don’t do anything, but Sophia is like, ‘Nope, you’re doing this,’” Clark said. “And they do it, because it’s Sophia. It’s amazing to see someone her age be so driven and get so much done and have so much influence. People do things with her because they love and respect her. They know everything she picks to do is for a reason and something is going to come out of it.”
 
"She loves leadership opportunities,” Paul said. “Good leaders get people to not just follow them but step up and become leaders and she's that kind of a person. She's not just a do-what-I-say type of person. She gets the ball rolling and gets other people involved with it.
 
"The broadcasting is going to have an impact on all of our schools. She's one that just gets people involved in the school. She's so high-energy and everyone responds to her."
 
While sports has been the early focus, it’s not the only goal Weber has in mind for the broadcasting club. Her intent is to incorporate everything going on at Herington and promote it to the community and beyond.
 
“The end goal is not just for sports, but to capture and emulate all student life,” Weber said. “Obviously sports are going to be a big part of it. Sports drive our community and is what pulls us all together. But we want to have every student highlighted and featured. We have amazing students at our school doing great things outside of athletics. We have people really good in scholars bowl, FFA – things like that – that don’t always get the recognition they deserve. So it’s about student life. We really want to share it with our community and bridge that gap between the school and the community.”
 
Weber’s leadership qualities were noticeable early, Beye said, recalling two specific examples.
 
When Weber was in sixth grade, Herington was hosting an FBLA competition and Beye needed help. So she enlisted her middle school basketball players as timers, most of whom begrudgingly came to school on Martin Luther King Day.
 
“But Sophia showed up with dress clothes on and was all excited about it,” Beye said. “I put her in the public speaking room with our assistant coach. After that competition the next day at practice, she came up to me and said, 'I've already got my high school FBLA public speaking competition speech written and memorized. ... She told me all the guidelines it had to be and she knew everything about this competition. That's a sixth-grader sitting there and listening to that and being involved.”
 
Three years later, Weber arrived at high school ready to make an impact in FBLA.
 
“First day of freshman year, comes into my room and she said, 'I just want to let you know that before I graduate, I'm going to be the state FBLA president and the Mountain Plains vice-president,’” Beye said. “I kind of chuckled and was like, 'OK, good one.' I've had state officers but never a state president and I had no clue what it was going to take to have a Mountain Plains vice president. Sure enough, she made state president last summer and region vice president this year. All that was on her own, through her own driven abilities. I was there to support and guide her. She knows how to get herself into situations where she's going to be successful. And she got herself there."
 
Weber said Beye has been a huge inspiration.
 
“We’ve been through so much together and she’s helped me grow in my leadership and is the reason I have so much courage and confidence to completely start something from scratch at our school,” Weber said. “She shared a quote with me from her favorite author and speaker, Jon Gordon, and it’s, ‘Don’t push someone to greatness, love them to greatness. Because when you love them, they’ll push themselves.’
 
“I think that just really speaks to who she is. All that she’s shown me is what’s made me a great person, what’s pushed me to be great and see the greatness in other people. I’ve seen how to lead other people.”
 
As much joy as Weber has found in laying out her career path at Herington, she’s found even more joy in seeing her classmates join her on the journey. Her hope is she’s started something that will last well beyond her days at Herington.
 
“It’s been special because I see the other students at the school doing these different things and they love it so much,” she said. “At the end of the day, that’s what makes me happy.
 
“I’m very much a tunnel vision person. If I know what the end goal is, I put everything I have into hitting that end goal. I can say confidently that if there’s a goal or something I want to achieve or other people on the ride with me want to achieve, we go after it. Once I have a goal, I’m going to get to the end. I’m going to get there. I love bringing people along with me because I know how it feels to reach my goals and I love for them to experience that feeling too.”