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MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE SPRING 2015
the
Leader
TATIANA PURNELL ’15
By Lee Owen ONE CAN FIND Tatiana Purnell ’15 in many different locations on campus: the classroom, the track, on stage as a performer or a declaimer, working with younger students as a Peer Group Leader, or making a speech or announcement as president of the Student Council. Wherever she goes, though, the place she seems to be most often is toward the front. “Tatiana is a natural leader,” says faculty member David Grady, who works with Purnell as Mercersburg’s head indoor track & field coach. “She steps up when her teammates need her. I think people are willing to follow her lead because she is kind to them and she backs it up by holding herself to a high standard.” Purnell holds Mercersburg school records in five different track & field events (the indoor 55-meter hurdles, 60-meter hurdles, and triple jump, as well as the outdoor 100-meter and 300-meter hurdles). She has qualified for a track & field state-championship meet in each of the past three years (including as a 10th-grade student at Dallastown Area High School near York, Pennsylvania, where she attended before coming to Mercersburg in the 11th grade). Purnell has also placed at Declamation in both of her years at the Academy, earning second place for the Irving Society as an upper middler and as a senior; in 2015, she and Irving teammates Jan Smilek ’16 (first place), Nikki DeParis ’15 (third place) and Julia Gledhill ’15 and Katherine Reber ’17 (who joined the other three as the judges’ choice for the strongest Declamation team) helped Irving sweep all 700 points at the event to win Mercersburg’s IrvingMarshall competition. Tatiana Purnell at Declamation 2015