Scholar Stories: Cross Country's Hill Learning to Teach Future Students
10/3/2018 11:53:00 AM | Men's Cross Country, Men's Track & Field, Features
Continuing the popular series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Prairie Farms.
By Max Brill
Some people go their entire lives without finding their calling. Ben Hill, a senior on the University of Michigan men's cross country and track and field teams, has been fortunate enough to find two.
"I've always thought about education as a field of interest," he said. "My dad is an educator, too. He's a fourth grade teacher in Novi. Teaching has always been on my mind and I've seen it done behind the scenes as the son of a teacher."
From his dedication to his studies, Hill's passion for education is clear. Each Tuesday, he spends 10 hours in classrooms before shifting his attention back to the track.
"I go out to my field placement at Perry Elementary School; it's an early-learning center in Ypsilanti," he explained. "I'll drive out there at 8 a.m. and then I've got class until 7 p.m. It's definitely a grind.
"No matter what the classes end up being, it's a dual role with athletics and academics. I'm passionate about both so I'm going to do whatever it takes."
Hill grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan, about 45 minutes northeast of Ann Arbor. He competed in a handful of different sports growing up, so running track in college was not necessarily on his mind.
"I grew up in a house where sports was a central aspect of what we did," he said. "My dad coached football and coached my soccer team growing up. I played soccer, basketball and then I ended up running and even swimming for a little bit. It was cool to grow up in that environment."
It was not until high school when he realized that he would be able to compete in college.
"One of my coaches, Dave Barnett, wrote a letter to my parents, telling us that he thought I had a chance to run at a very high level collegiately if I made the decision to train and stick with running," he said. "I was playing soccer at the time and running was still kind of a secondary thing to me. It wasn't until the end of my sophomore year when I really started to get after some of those track workouts."
Now, though, he has blossomed into one of the Wolverines' leaders and has fully embraced his leadership role on the team.
"I think an important thing to understand is that at the beginning, when you're getting to know a new group of students or you're getting to know a new team or something like that, you have to learn what works for each person, what motivates them," Hill said. "Some people respond better to a stern reminder or to quicken the pace and some people just need more time to think."
"We're a very young team. There are a lot of things I've learned from others. And a good mindset to have is that everybody is going to be doing something better than yourself. You can learn something from everybody on your team."
When he is not busy training to compete, Hill is training to educate future problem solvers, something he has been interested in from a young age. He is majoring in early education so that he has the opportunity to teach in public schools once he graduates. He says that he figured out he wanted to be an educator after working for a summer at SpringHill, a Christian ministry camp.
"I really enjoyed being able to care for the next generation," Hill said. "I think working in a public school and teaching future learners and future college students will give me that opportunity."
Hill's passion does not stop in the classroom, though. He says he likes to take what he learns in the classroom and apply it to the track, and vice versa.
"It's a good, mutually beneficial relationship between school and sport for me, where the hard work that we put in in practice, the hard work that goes into the classroom, makes me sharper and more efficient with time," he said.
The distance runner credits Barnett, his high school track coach and science teacher, for nurturing his passion for track and fostering his love for education.
"I had Coach Barnett in the classroom for two years," Hill explained. "He was my teacher in ninth grade and then again my senior year. It was really cool to have him as a coach and as a mentor, teaching me that regardless of what I did on the track, I had to still take school very seriously. He wanted to bring the most out of me in the classroom."
And like Barnett, Hill also is pursuing a career as a science teacher.
"I think it's a really cool opportunity for kids to explore and investigate the scientific process at work," he said.
Beyond science, though, Hill wants to ensure that he is teaching his students to be contributing members of society outside the classroom.
"I think bringing respect, that's going to be a big deal for me once I'm running my own show," Hill said. "I think having respect and instilling that work ethic it takes to be successful is something that has to be learned at some point."
"I'd like to have kids explore and learn things and feel like they're empowered to take on the responsibility of learning and coming to solutions themselves."
Players Mentioned
