Wake up, go to school, attend sports practice, do homework, sleep, eat, repeat. While this is the usual grueling schedule of the standard sleep deprived student-athlete, sophomore Lucy Borunda does it like no other. With an impressive workload of participating in speech and debate, SGA (Student Government Association), Mu Alpha Theta, cross country, soccer and dance, Borunda plays the role of student-athlete to the max. As a sophomore, she juggles many responsibilities all while remaining incredibly humble. Borunda’s journey shows how passion, discipline and balance can enable students to excel academically, athletically and socially all at the same time.
“I think it’s just all about making sure you kind of stay on top of things, utilizing your time in JA and when you get home not wasting it [time]. Making sure you do the things that you need to do so that you have time to do the things that you want to do,” Borunda said.
In addition to her involvement in Robinson’s extracurriculars, Borunda excels academically, skipping AP Precalculus—a standard sophomore course—and enrolling in a junior-level math class, an uncommon achievement in the IB program. She has always excelled in math but had a few years outside of the public-school setting to get ahead.
“Yeah, I was homeschooled for three years like specifically in middle school, we had moved to New Mexico and they have the worst schools in the entire country. I just took a lot of classes through this random online place, and I was just able to take them and in a very short span of time. I skipped two years of pre-algebra and started algebra in 6th grade and then I just took every class I could in four months so then I just piled up math credits,” Borunda said.
Upon returning to Florida, Borunda chose the rigorous IB program at Robinson, even though it meant separating from her twin sister, who attends Plant High School.
“I think for us, because we were so close and together all the time for when we were homeschooling and I think it was kind of nice to go separate ways, plus like I really wanted to do IB and she was not as concerned about it. I also wanted to play sports here and at Plant it’s a lot harder to make the teams. It was kind of hard because it forces you to like branch out a lot, but like it was good in the long run,” Borunda said.
Despite having to come straight out of homeschooling, she has kept up an impressive social life and her efforts to maintain the student-athlete balance do not go unnoticed by her peers.
“Lucy is one of the most hardworking people that I’ve ever met in my entire life. Every single time I see her, she’s either doing something, whether it’s cross country, whether it’s soccer, whether it’s speech and debate, whether it’s school work, and she like does it 100 percent to her best ability every single time,” soccer teammate Sadie Proveaux (’27) said. “She’s so multifaceted and she’s just like really good at like balancing everything that she has to do. Even when she has so much stuff going on, she’s always helping other people without a second thought; and that’s just like a really admirable thing.”
Borunda’s achievements don’t come easily to her, but with a daily average of six hours of sleep and the hefty goal of attending the University of Cambridge fueling her, she manages to genuinely enjoy her packed schedule.
“It just motivates me to like remember that I’m doing this for me and even when it gets busy, I still want to do it and I still wanna be there. Just make sure you’re enjoying what you’re doing. Don’t make it too successful for yourself to the point where you don’t want to do it anymore,” Borunda said.
Borunda continues to exemplify the character of the student-athlete and serves as an inspiration to others around her. As only a sophomore, she’s just getting started on leaving her mark.
“When people see her do so good, I think we use her as inspiration to keep pushing and be like, ‘oh I want to be like Lucy’ because she’s a person that you would want to be like,” debate teammate Tania Mulay (’27) said.
