Athlete Spotlight: James Wood Cross Country Runner Andrew Shade

Posted: October 7, 2014

James Wood High School 17-year-old senior

Sport: Cross Country

Position: No. 1 runner

Parents: Sheri Shade

Hometown: Winchester

Nicknames: “Slim Shady” is what they started calling me my sophomore year.

What do you love about cross country:

Biggest strength and weakness in cross country: [Strength] just not slowing down and I push it up the hills, that’s where I catch a lot of people. We run a lot of hills in practice and it just kind of comes natural to me. [Weakness] probably my starts. Whenever I start off I end up in packs towards the back and have to work my way out of it. I need to work on going out a little harder.

Prematch routine/ritual: We do a slurpee run every Friday, it’s just something we do with the whole team. We do a little 3-mile run and we just stop at Sheetz because it’s right below the school.

Most memorable moment in cross country: It’d actually be this season at Kernstown (on Sept. 13) when I finally got under 17 minutes, I ran 16:42. That was my goal in the season to get there, but I was really proud to get that pretty early on.

Most embarrassing moment in cross country: Just whenever you go to take off and stumble, or I’ve fallen on a distance run. We’ve been running trails and I’ve just hit a root or something and went down.

Favorite athlete: [Denver Broncos wide receiver] Wes Welker. Whenever he started out nobody thought he was going to be able to do a whole lot, but he ended up surprising a bunch of people and has been really good.

Favorite sports team: New England Patriots

Three people you can have dinner with, dead or alive: I’d have to say Wes Welker would be one of them, I’d want to ask him what pushed him to play football and try as hard as he does; then my favorite NASCAR driver A.J. Allmendinger because he went through a rough patch, got in trouble with some drugs and stuff, and he’s come out of that and he’s doing really well right now; and the lead singer of Linkin Park, Mike Shinoda. They’re one of my favorite bands.

Most interesting person you follow on social media: On Intagram @worldofsupercars always have pictures up of really cool cars.

Favorite thing to do in town: I like to just go around and look at cars, even if I’m not going to buy one. I like the new sports cars, if I could have any car right now it’d be the 2014 Dodger Viper SRT.

Best live sporting event you’ve been to: I’d have to say when I went to a Washington Redskins game against Carolina a couple years ago, that was probably the best. It was pretty cool because it was RG3’s first season and my little brother is a big Panthers fan and likes Cam Newton and we got to sit right behind him.

Plans after high school: I’m still trying to figure out if I want to go engineering, like mechanical, or criminal justice. But I do plan to try and run in college. I’m really looking at Shenandoah, to do criminal justice there for four years and run for them, but we’ll see.

— Compiled by Kevin Trudgeon