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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Former Pinto Heads To Air Force Academy

By Harold Smith
Mountain View Telegraph
      Stormi Brewer, as her parents probably envisioned if her given name is any indication, never was a shrinking violet.
       Brewer, who actually led the Moriarty High cross country team as its de facto coach at the outset of her senior year as a Lady Pinto, recently finished up her freshman season at New Mexico Highlands University. But her tenure as a Cowgirl was short-lived as she is now bound for the Air Force Academy after being nominated by Sens. Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman and Rep. Heather Wilson.
       “I applied in April 2007,” said the 5-foot-7 17-year-old, who graduated from Moriarty in 2007. “The application process took over a year. Your ACT score in English and reading has to be a 24, and your math has to be a 25.”
       Brewer is at home now for a brief summer vacation. She reports to the Air Force Academy on June 26 for what she calls the “basic training” part at the Falcons' campus outside Colorado Springs.
       “I'm all of the above, excited, nervous, scared,” Brewer said. “It's going to be a challenge, but I like challenges.”
       But why a military academy?
       “That's what everyone asks me,” she said. “It's just something I want to do. Really, there are a lot of reasons. You can learn so many new things, have new experiences. And the student-to-teacher ratio is 15 to 1. You can't beat that. I do better in smaller classes. And maybe it's just that I want to serve my country.”
       Brewer will definitely be in shape when she shows up. But she admits to having some apprehension about the water-survival segment of basic, which includes a drop off a high dive into deep water.
       “I'll have to get over my fear of water and heights,” she said. “I'm not a good swimmer.”
       The pace won't slacken after basic.
       “I think I might like foreign-area studies because you get to go to different places and learn a language,” she said.
       Brewer earned a 4.0 grade-point average in the fall and had “about a 3.8” in the spring at Highlands.
       “I loved it there,” she said. “Some people don't like it because they think there's nothing to do there. But I'm from Moriarty. At least Las Vegas had a movie theater and a Wal-Mart.”
       Brewer roomed with former Pintos speedster Brittney Sullivan at Highlands.
       Brewer competed in the women's 6-kilometer cross country runs, the 800-meter open, the mile, the 3,000-meter steeplechase as well as ran legs for Highlands' 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter relays.
       “It definitely was a change that you had to get used to,” Brewer said. “We did three times the miles we did in high school. It went all right. It wasn't great, and it wasn't horrible. At the conference meet, about two weeks ago, we set the school record in the 4x400 (relay). I think it was about a 4:08.”
   

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