Mead High senior Corrie Grieves enjoys fencing, taekwondo and watching TV shows in German
Mead High School senior Corrie Grieves is not one to sit idle. The honor roll student seems determined to be in as many school clubs and activities outside of school as possible.
Her interests range from Knowledge Bowl to taekwondo to fencing, said school counselor Melanie Fender. “Corinna is an outstanding young lady,” Fender said. “She has a strong academic record and a diverse list of unique interests.”
Grieves lived in Ohio before her father got a job as a journalism professor at Whitworth University four years ago. She said she and her parents and younger sister lived in a small town in coal mining country. She loves Spokane.
“It’s a lot nicer,” she said. “The nature here is so much better. I do definitely like it in the Northwest so much more.”
She first got involved in fencing at 11 and said she is lucky to attend the one school in the Spokane area that has a fencing club. Her team often fences with college teams because there are no local high school teams. “It’s definitely not a sport you usually see in high school,” she said.
Though she has stuck with the sport for years, she’s not really sure why she started. “It was probably because I read a lot of fantasy books as a kid,” she said. “The idea of sword fighting always seemed really cool to me.”
She started taekwondo when she was even younger, at 8. She stopped taking classes during middle school, but went back to it when she arrived in Spokane. This spring she earned her black belt. “Martial arts in general is something I’ve always been interested in,” she said. “I like the idea of being able to defend myself.”
She was in Knowledge Bowl during her first three years of high school, an experience she enjoyed. “You’d be surprised at how much trivia you can summon up from the depths of your mind,” she said.
This year, however, she switched to Health Occupations Students of America. She won the state competition in the Community Emergency Response Team category, where she had to triage medical patients. “It was incredibly stressful,” she said.
She will attend the national competition in Florida in June.
One of her hobbies is watching German television shows on the internet – in German. Her paternal grandmother was born in Germany, and her father speaks German at home. She reads novels and watches television shows in German to practice the language.
“There are a lot of German crime shows that are really interesting,” she said.
Those shows fit in with another of her other favorite hobbies. “I love foreign films,” she said. “I watch a lot of Kung Fu movies, honestly.”
When she has down time she does something else people might not expect a high school student to do – she likes to do cross-stitch. She believes it’s more common than most people think, however.
“It’s not something you see or talk about, but it’s something a surprising number of people do,” she said.
After she graduates from high school, Grieves plans to attend Pacific Lutheran University to study sociology. She said she’s thinking of going into law enforcement, but she’s not sure what type yet. And she’ll keep up with her taekwondo lessons, which should be helpful in her future career.