These Marysville High School 2024 graduates have decided where they will continue their academic and athletic endeavors. They are from left, Blake Murgatroyd, track and cross-country at Ohio Dominican University; Olivia Brooks, soccer at Otterbein University; Shannon Cordle, track and soccer at MIT; and Ava Elliott, track and cross-country at East Carolina University.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Tim Miller)
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Several 2024 senior members of the Marysville High School track and field program have decided where they will compete on the collegiate level.
Making those recent decisions were Olivia Brooks, Blake Murgatroyd, Shannon Cordle and Ava Elliott.
Brooks has decided she will concentrate on soccer at the next level.
She will play at Otterbein University.
Murgatroyd will run both track and cross-country at Ohio Dominican University, Cordle will play soccer and compete in track and field at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Elliott will continue her cross-country and track careers at East Carolina University.
Brooks, who had also considered Ohio Wesleyan University, said she likes Otterbein’s atmosphere.
“It just feels like family,” she said in describing the soccer program at the Westerville school.
Brooks will play either forward or as a midfielder for the Cardinals’ squad.
She anticipates playing quite a bit as a freshman during the upcoming fall season.
She will major in elementary education in her quest to become a school teacher.
“I’m ‘little-kid’ oriented,” she said. “Along with being a school teacher, I may get into coaching some day.”
Murgatroyd likes the fact Ohio Dominican University is close to home.
“They also have good cross-country and track and field programs,” he said.
The distance runner chose ODU over Otterbein, Baldwin-Wallace and Ashland University.
Murgatroyd plans to study sports management.
“I want to work on the business side of a professional sports franchise some day,” he said.
He said Ohio Dominican’s coaches in both sports have indicated he will be able to compete in varsity meets as a freshman.
“My father and I visited Boston and I fell in love with the culture.”
That’s how Cordle described her visit to the New England area and her decision to enroll at MIT.
Along with an intensive course of study in biomedical engineering, Cordle will have grueling sports schedules in both the fall with soccer and spring with track and field.
“A lot of athletes go on to play soccer and compete in track and field on the collegiate level,” said Cordle. “However, I think I may be the first (soccer) goal keeper to do both.”
Elliott said she wanted to go to school a little farther away from Ohio and where the weather is warmer during the winter months.
That, plus good women’s track and cross-country programs drew her to East Carolina.
“I had looked at some other schools, but I didn’t go very deep in the recruitment process with them,” she said.
Both programs are relatively new among East Carolina athletics.
Elliott, who will study nursing, hopes to help build both teams in the coming years.