Mt. Spokane High School: Heidi Neumiller will use skills honed in high school sports medicine to pursue nursing degree at WSU
When Mt. Spokane High School senior Heidi Neumiller learned before her freshman year that she would have the opportunity to enroll in a sports medicine class, she didn’t hesitate.
Having been interested in the medical field for a while, Neumiller took sports medicine from the beginning of her high school career, and recently completed her eighth semester in the program. After one semester, she joined Mt. Spokane’s Sports Medicine Club, and has gone on to represent her school and Washington high school programs as a competitor, officer and board member.
During her senior year, she demonstrated her leadership qualities as she participated in Advocacy Day, where she spoke to Washington state legislators about funding for Career and Technical Education.
“From the beginning, I liked how engaging and hands-on sports medicine was,” she said. “Everyone gets first-aid and CPR certified, and there are various state and national competitions. During my freshman year, we won the national high school competition, and my junior year we won the state championship.”
Neumiller has been involved in 4H even longer, since she was 8 years old. She started riding at 5, and she was president of a student-run 4H club based in Deer Park for five years before leaving that position to mentor younger students for leadership roles. She has participated in numerous mentorship projects, given riding lessons, and volunteered for Free Rein, a therapeutic riding program for children and adults with special needs.
“I think that 4H has helped me the most in being able to serve my community and be a helping hand to others,” she said. “4H has lots of community-service programs, and I’ve always been the leader type.
“My experience in sports medicine has helped with my self-confidence. Working with injured athletes has taught me how to communicate patiently when someone is in a state of distress, and how to act confidently, calmly, and efficiently.”
Those qualities will be important as she pursues a career as a labor and delivery nurse, starting this fall at Washington State University, where both her parents attended. Her mother is a nurse, and her father is a professor of pharmacotherapy at WSU.
What’s the appeal of labor and delivery?
“I think that is the most positive area in nursing,” she said, “being able to help start new families and be there at the beginning of a life. Sports medicine has given me a basic understanding of anatomy and how the body works as well as patient care, and that will help me.”
Neumiller has also demonstrated her strengths in the classroom, including Advanced Placement Literature, where Mt. Spokane teacher Izze Scourey, offered high praise for her.
“Heidi is a forthright, thoughtful student,” Scourey said. “She is attentive, detail-oriented and inquisitive. She asks great questions and shares her understanding with others. She is an effective, engaging communicator, and while I know that her academic passions are aligned with health sciences and medicine, she is one of my most thoughtful students, and cares about deeper meanings and universal connections to her studies.”