Scholarships awarded to track and field athletes headed for Cal, Penn

Local running club the Future Track Running Pack awarded $2,000 scholarships to two recent high school graduates: Sophia Grant of Newbury Park High School and Gabriel Chin of Thousand Oaks High School. This is the first year the club has given the scholarship to two recipients. Both students will compete in NCAA Division I athletics next year—Grant at UC Berkeley and Chin at the University of Pennsylvania.

Grant ran cross country and track for four years, specializing in the 800- and 1600-meter races. She qualified for CIF postseason competition in both sports, reached the Masters Meet in her junior and senior track seasons, and posted personal bests of a 4:50 mile (junior year) and a 2:13 800 meters (senior year). A Camarillo resident, she began club training in seventh grade with the Camarillo Cosmos and decided as a junior that she wanted to run in college; she is considering an engineering major.

Chin has been hurdling since middle school and took up the decathlon midway through high school. He learned several events as a junior, with the discus joining the hurdles among his strengths, and he qualified for CIF Masters in both events that year. In 2025 he finished fifth in the decathlon at Nike Outdoor Nationals, the first time he completed the full two-day event after qualifying based on personal-best scores. Chin trained under Thousand Oaks coach Marlene Wilcox and with teammate Chris Toppe; a torn meniscus from basketball affected his senior season but he expects to be recovered by the time he arrives at Penn, where he is also considering mechanical engineering.

The Future Track Running Pack, incorporated in 1993, invites graduating seniors from local high schools to apply each year; scholarship chair Brad Frederickson said the club had dozens of quality applicants and was pleased to recognize Grant and Chin. The group meets for practice Monday evenings at the Oak Park High School track.

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