Lakeland: Shelby Wear won’t let a foot in the face keep her from her goals

Shelby Wear, 18, is a young woman who works hard to achieve her goals, and often hits her target … and then some.

She’s competitive and has loved sports since she was a child. She was always into soccer, joined her identical twin sister Hailley in cheer and, just for fun, thought she would give tennis a try.

The result? She is graduating from Rathdrum’s Lakeland High School as a four-year, three-sport athlete in soccer, cheer and tennis, something very hard to accomplish, said Lakeland principal Jimmy Hoffman.

Her mother, Shani Wear, said her twin girls have always supported one another in competition, but have been most competitive against one another: “When they were in judo when they were younger and matched against the other, people stopped what they were doing to watch. It was something.”

So many things in Wear’s life revolve around sports. She loves swimming and beach volleyball, overcame some jitters to dive into snorkeling in Hawaii and has fun camping with the family. She also works part time.

She’s was determined to be a good scholar and, according to her mother, got her homework done before ever having to be told to do so. She carries a 3.95 GPA and, as a recipient of the Idaho Top Scholar Award, will be attending North Idaho College on scholarship this fall. Plans are to study pre-med, with an eventual goal of going on to medical school.

She takes seriously the philosophy of you only live once and advises people not to be scared of new things. Or difficult things.

And while it’s not unusual for a young woman to excel in sports, she does defy expectations there. When the cheer team is stunting (pyramids, throw-and-catch, etc.), it might be expected that she would be the flyer, the person tossed up into the air. But, no, her position is that of base, the person who throws and catches, holding most of the weight of the flyer.

“Well, I really am pretty strong,” said the slender, 5-foot, 2-inch-tall athlete, with a bit of a smile on her face. “But that doesn’t prevent me from getting hit during the stunt. A foot to the face is not uncommon.”

Hoffman said Wear always does the right thing, is a hard-working girl and a great leader in their building. “We are very proud of her.”