Most of the time in this magazine you read about student-athletes who have achieved success in a sport. But the story of Pittsburg freshman Josh Nix dwells more on the student side of student-athlete. Josh does play basketball and golf but they aren’t huge factors in his life. It’s the academics that are the stars of his life.
“I was a freshman this year but I took some extra math classes and am taking an English class this summer, so next fall I will be a junior,” said Nix who is also on the school’s academic team. So do you think you’ll miss the experience of not having a sophomore year?
“My main focus is to look my best for colleges and being able to skip a year academically is eye-catching. I took the ACT this year (somewhat unusual for a freshman) and scored a 32. I’ll take it again this fall and hope to bump that to a 34 or 35. I’d also like to do some interning if possible.”
Josh got into basketball at an early age but it was more a matter of all of his friends were playing and he felt some peer pressure to get involved. But now that he’s in high school that peer pressure is something that he tries to avoid.
“I think the main thing about having good character is trying to avoid getting sucked into the stereotypical high school behavior,” said Josh. “There’s a lot of peer pressure to try different things but I think you need to focus on what’s important to you and do the things that will get you where you want to go. I think a lot of that is just being yourself.”
Being yourself and playing your part is also a character trait he plans to use in basketball this next season.
“Character for me in athletics is to try not to be selfish in basketball but just play my role and see the importance of it.”
Studying and learning are the things that take up Josh’s spare time. He has a tutor/mentor that he meets with each week and his grandpa plays a role in that as well.
“My grandpa is really the main motivator in my life because he is really hard working. I’ll usually visit with him every weekend and we’ll just talk and drink coffee. I really enjoy studying the humanities and I’ve also taken an interest lately in political science.”
As you can tell, Josh Nix really takes the student part of student-athlete to heart and who knows, maybe someday we’ll be talking about Congressman Nix.
