There’s an inherent lesson in sports that Elza Clift learned at a young age.
You can practice for hours on end, have a good game plan in place and enter a game with the right frame of mind — and still come up short on the scoreboard.
“It’s very tough,” Clift said. “Part of the reason I play sports is to get those experiences. It’s special to face adversity and push through it, and come out stronger. It prepares you for life.”
Clift’s commitment extends well beyond the athletic field.
The Iola High School senior carried the same dedication to her studies, putting her in line to graduate this week with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average. She and her Class of 2025 classmates will be honored at a commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. Saturday in the IHS gymnasium.
“High school went by so fast,” Clift said. “But at the same time, I look back and think, I’ve been here a long time.”
Clift’s inspiration to succeed in the classroom came in part as a challenge to meet the standard set by her mother, Sara, who graduated with a 4.0 GPA from IHS in 1997.
“It wasn’t necessarily to live up to her,” Clift explained. “But I wanted to accomplish what she accomplished. I was determined to get all A’s in high school, and she knows whenever I set my mind on a goal, I try my absolute hardest to accomplish it.”
Doing so meant finding a balance between the classroom and her multiple other pursuits, especially athletics.
“I always tried to put homework first,” she said. “If we had to leave for a game at 1:45, and I had an assignment due that night, I had to focus on getting the homework done first.”
On the rare occasions she’d consider procrastinating on an assignment, the urge to get things done “would come back to haunt me,” she laughed. “So I’d have to shove it all into getting it done in a little period of time. There were a few times I’d have to take my computer with me on the bus to type an essay, but it wasn’t that frequent. Once I got my homework done, it felt like a weight was off my chest. It made me a better person.”
THERE WERE “definitely a couple” close calls when it came to maintaining all A’s, she chuckled.
‘“In my mind, I was thinking, it’s not the end of the world if I got a B,” she said. “But I didn’t want one.”
Clift credits her teachers.
“That’s really part of the way I was able to keep my grades up,” she said. “I loved all my teachers. If there were any times I was on the line, I’d ask if there was anything I could do, like extra credit. I tried to stay as good a student as I could.”
CLIFT, daughter of Patrick and Sara Clift, will head to Ottawa University next year to study exercise science and join the Braves softball team.
She excelled in multiple sports in high school, earning all-league honors in both volleyball and softball. She also thrived on the basketball court with her defensive intensity and ability to hit timely outside shots.
