Kylie Shalala

School: Plymouth Whitemarsh

Cross Country, Track

 

 

Favorite athlete:  Gerard Pique

Favorite team:  F.C. Barcelona

Favorite memory competing in sports:  Winning my Senior Day race against Wissahickon and breaking 20 minutes for the first time!

Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports:  Tripping while crossing the finish line after running the 3200. Once I got off the track, I was told that they counted the laps wrong, and I still had one more to go!  I think the boy behind me started to cry he was so upset.

Music on iPod:  Probably whatever is on the radio (before it’s overplayed)

Future plans:  To obtain a degree in International Affairs and hopefully run in college!

Words to live by:  “If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done.”

One goal before turning 30:  To live abroad and hopefully make a positive, tangible difference in people’s lives.

One thing people don’t know about me:  I want to make an orphanage for disabled children and for those whose families can’t provide for them, most likely somewhere in Latin America.

 

By GORON GLANTZ

When Kylie Shalala first walked through the doors at Plymouth Whitemarsh, there was no flying under the radar.

Her older brother, Dan, had a reputation as a star runner that preceded her.

“My brother was a senior when I was a freshman,” she recalled. “I was ‘Dan Shalala’s little sister.’”

Nonetheless, Shalala – the Univest Featured Female Athlete -- blocked out the noise enough to set herself on the path to making her own name for herself.

“For a freshman, I had a decent year,” added Shalala, who runs cross-country in the fall and then distance events (mile, 3200, 4x4 relay) in the winter and spring.

Encouraged by her sophomore season, and buoyed by parents and grandparents cheering her on, Shalala was intent on making her mark as a junior when fate dealt her a bad hand.

Or foot.

Because she had tendinitis in her foot, she looked to other forms of training, such as bike riding.

“I was trying not to run in the summer every day,” she said. “I was biking with my mom. I came home and was dehydrated and had an empty stomach. I stood up, saw all black and hit my head on the kitchen counter.”

The result? A concussion, which took a full month to fully recover from.

Then came the next one.

“It’s really kind of embarrassing,” she said. “I walked into the bedroom door. This time it was a month and a half. I had to get cleared by the doctor and the school’s athletic trainer.”

She was not only missing out on the cross country and winter track seasons, but the standout student with a 4.58 weighted GPA had to alter her academic game plan.

During the winter break, for example, she was banned from technology.

“It was kind of hard,” she said. “I went back to school, but I had memory loss. I couldn’t really study.  I couldn’t take my finals until a week after the semester ended.”

Meanwhile, there was still the issue with her foot.

“That was hard, too,” she said. “I had run for a track team in the summer. That’s what caused it. It was from overuse.”

The slow recovery included a lap at a time, and then two laps at a time.

“You have to build yourself back up,” said Shalala, who did return for the spring outdoor season but only achieved one personal best the entire campaign.

She added: “I spent a lot of the spring season trying to catch up. I got just one personal record, and that was by one second. I was really trying to push myself for a lot of my junior year.”

Coming Back

The good news for Shalala is that she came back strong as a senior, enjoying a solid cross country season as a captain for head coach Kim Diamond.

“Kylie was such an easy runner to coach and an excellent captain and role model to the team,” said Diamond.  “Recovering from an injury that had her out the entire last season, she felt like she had a lot to prove, and she did.  Running first team All-Conference, finishing fifth in the league, Kylie continued to drop her times all season.  She set a goal at the beginning of the season to break 20 minutes, and she worked extremely hard to reach this goal.”

Shalala said she took her role as captain seriously and feels she made an impact.

“I hope I was a good role model to my teammates,” she said. “I enjoyed trying to help everyone do their best.

“Going into every race, we tell each other to have a great race and get all the spirits up. With the JV girls, you have to be right there, cheering them on.”

In the end, though, individual motivation and being goal-oriented comes from within the runner. Shalala is no different.

“I wanted to be, time-wise, faster than in previous years and qualify for districts,” she said. “It’s heavily on the individual. You want to prove yourself.”

And just as she blocked out the comparisons to her brother when she decided to run in his footsteps at PW, she is working on mastering the art of blocking out opponents from other schools and just competing against herself and her own expectations.

“Exactly,” said Shalala, who expressed gratitude to Diamond and winter/spring coach Jamar Jones for being in her corner. “If you look up all the others’ times, you can psych yourself out. You have to concentrate on how you do, individually. That’s the mindset I tried to stay with.”

For the most part, Shalala was buoyed by her return, although she couldn’t help but use her brother as a measuring stick.

“It did meet my expectations,” she said. “I’m happy with it. My brother made it to states, but finishing fifth in the league was still very satisfying.”

                                    Weighing Options

Dan Shalala went on Drexel University, which does not have varsity track, so he runs on the club team. Kylie is weighing her next-level options now.

Her application will include a litany of activities that speak to her character and interests – National Honor Society, Anti-Defamation League, Model U.N., Spanish U.N., Steering Committee and Student Council.

She is taking two AP classes and all the others are honors courses. She also works in 25 hours of community service.

Along with running, that’s a lot of time already spoken for.

“I was telling my mom this the other day,” she said. “I said that I’m lucky that most of my clubs are during school, at night or on the weekend. But, yes, it is very hard. I don’t think I struggle, but it can be stressful. You just have to have time management skills.”

And those will serve her well in college, wherever that may be.

“Kylie is going to continue to do great things after high school,” predicted Diamond.

Shalala is doing all she can to set herself up for the best all-around experience.

“It’s going well,” she said of her college hunt. “I’m torn between wanting to run at Division I or at Division III.”

The rationale for being torn – mostly between American University and Dickinson College -- is sound.

“Division I is very time-consuming,” she said. “It’s a lot of hours at Division I, so I’m talking to Division III schools. I’m not sure yet.”

Shalala has the wisdom to see the bigger picture because of her clear-cut career aspirations. She wants to major in International Relations and help make the world a better place.

She inherited the love of travel from her father, Dan Sr., and got to scratch that itch by taking part in an exchange program with a student from Spain.

She went to Spain for 18 days, and then the student from Spain stayed with the Shalala family here.

“It was so cool to have a foreign student with me, and going to Spain was a new and great experience,” she said, pointing to how much it helped her improve her Spanish.

From her mother, Amy, there is a compelling need to help others.

Shalala accompanied her mother, a nurse – along with an aunt and cousins -- this past summer on a medical mission with Surgicorps International to Guatemala where an orphanage with children with disabilities from ailments such as cerebral palsy and the Zika virus left a lasting impression.

“They have nothing in these orphanages,” said Shalala, who was able to “scrub in” on surgeries. “They are left there, on the steps, with disabilities. It’s just something that I want to do. To be able make a difference I can see would be awesome to do.

“It’s just very important to me. If I end up not running in college, I know I’d still be running on my own.

“I never ran until high school. When they saw my brother’s success, my parents started. We all like to run.”