APEX, N.C. — This week’s High School Scholar Annabelle Troast is a leader in the classroom, sidelines and everywhere in between.
What You Need To Know
- Annabelle Troast is a senior at Middle Creek High School in Apex
- She is a multisport athlete, a top student and is involved with many activities in and outside of school
- Troast plans to study neuroscience in the fall
- She was awarded a $1,000 scholarship to the school of her choice through the Spectrum High School Scholars program
“She will always be the person who helps build them, even when they're struggling,” said Jodi Kandle, the head cheer and stunt coach at Middle Creek High School.
It’s how many describe Middle Creek senior Troast, a positive spirit who gives her all in anything she does.
“I’ve really just learned the importance of having a strong work ethic and approaching things with a positive attitude. Because if I'm thinking about things like, ‘I don't want to do it,’ then I don't do it well,” Troast said.
She is in the top 10 of her class with a GPA over 4.6, is taking almost exclusively AP courses and will begin studying neuroscience in the fall.
“I like thinking about how the brain works in like little details in the biology of things,” Troast said.
While she doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do in the field of neuroscience, she is spreading her love of education to her peers, helping tutor other students during lunch through Math Honor Society.
“When I can help them not only understand, but like, see how that understanding leads to their success, it's just so rewarding,” Troast said.
When she is not cheering on her classmates inside the classroom, she is cheering for them from the sidelines as the varsity cheer captain.
“She's that kid that everyone wants to coach because she's so coachable… when you go to coach her and you give her a correction, she takes that correction and applies it immediately and always tries,” Kandle said.
Kandle said Troast also speaks with new students on the cheer team about the importance of school and athletic balance.
“The academic success of this program has a lot has to do with her, because kids want to be like her and have that academic success throughout their four years,” Kandle said.
Troast also competes in track, running the 100- and 300-meter hurdles.
She is in many extracurricular activities, including leading a small group for fifth-graders at her church.
“He [God] brings me so many people in so many opportunities in school and in sports and in church and like outside of school. And I just I don't want to take any of that for granted,” Troast said.
As Troast moves on to the next chapter of her life, she wants to emulate a math constant she says is unique and multifaceted.
“As I graduate and go off into the world and try to do a bunch of amazing things, I want to be consistent like pi is, but I also want to be unpredictable and spontaneous and embrace this next chapter of my life,” Troast said.
Troast has won the past two years of knowing the most digits of pi at school, over 700 last year. This year she hopes to know 1,000.
North Carolina state Sen. Lisa Grafstein presented Troast with a $1,000 scholarship from Spectrum.
“The fact that she is engaged not just in her academics and athletic work but really serving her community, to me that means this is a young person who is going to make a difference in the world… I am excited to see what she does next,” Grafstein said.
Troast plans to attend either Clemson or UNC-Chapel Hill in fall.