Max Rivera is a senior at Neuqua Valley and one of their top sprinters, even though he hasn’t had a chance to display it until now. This feature is presented by Edward Medical Group.
Max: Freshman year I dislocated my kneecap doing triple jump in the first indoor meet so that was unfortunate.
And that was just the start… Max Rivera’s story sounds like a Lemony Snicket book… kneecap, then an ankle injury, overlapping seasons… COVID. Three seasons, wiped out.
Max: Mentally it just drained me, I wanted to come out my freshman year and prove to everyone that I was as good as I was in middle school but obviously I had to wait a couple of years to do that.
Mike: All of a sudden he’s had this bizarre series of events but then he kept coming back each time. So this is really a tale of a resilient athlete.
Rivera is both a member of the Neuqua Valley basketball team… as well as a potential star on the track team. And after three years of watching the race start from the side of the track… he’ll finally be toeing the start line.
Max: It means the world. Just being about to get one last shot senior year, just to go out there and leave my mark. We have high goals for this team this year but doing what we can is the best.
Not only is Rivera looking to get on the track… he’s looking to shatter records… and he may be ready to do just that.
Mike: Now he comes in at one of the out of season meets, breaks our school record twice in the 60m dash just from doing some training and outside work.
Max: Hopefully breaking the 100 meter school records. That’s been up there since 2017, set by Miles, he went on to the division 1 level. He’s a great sprinter so hopefully I can come close to that, possibly break it.
Myles Gascon is at St. Louis, running against the best the NCAA has to offer. And with some great times this year, Rivera may punch his ticket into the next level as well… finally.
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