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Volleyball is Westminster Christian School senior Lia Gonzalez’s ticket to college. She has already committed to play at Babson College in Wesley, Massachusetts, next year. She’ll major in business with a concentration in sports management.
The journey to Babson started when she was eight and began playing volleyball. She had four years on the varsity team at Gulliver Prep and then transferred to Westminster her sophomore year and going on to win the state championship as a junior.
She also competes at the highest level in tournaments year-round with her club team at Miami Volleyball Academy where she is team captain.
Gonzalez made the All Miami-Dade team for beach volleyball her sophomore and junior years. She made third team All Miami-Dade in volleyball her freshman and sophomore years and second team All Miami-Dade her junior year.
In addition to her passion for volleyball, Gonzalez is passionate about helping others. She jumped at the opportunity to become part of the Be the Light (BTL) club at Westminster.
BTL’s mission is to provide scholarships, with a focus on Christian education, in honor of Ari Arteaga, a student athlete at Columbus High School who tragically passed away in a car accident. “Be the Light” was his personal motto.
As the BTL chapter leader at Westminster, she partnered with Seba Luna, Gulliver’s chapter leader, to begin their passion project—creating a reading garden in an abandoned horticulture area at Ruth Owens Kruse Educational Center, a school in Kendall for students with special needs.
“Seba and I wanted to unite our communities to help students who have learning disabilities find joy in reading,” she says.
Gonzalez chose this school because she has her own struggles in reading.
“I have dyslexia, but I have learned to work hard and not let a disability get in my way,” she says. “I really want help these students enjoy and love reading, not avoid it. It would be so amazing to have a safe and tranquil place for them to sit back and enjoy a good read.”
During the first phase of the two-year project they collected 31 orchids to decorate an oak tree in the center of the garden to honor Ari’s jersey number.
The next phase included building reading benches and a pergola to provide a shaded area for the students to read.
This year they are planning to complete the project by adding a mural illustrating Ari’s legacy, building trellises with butterfly attracting plants and birdhouses, and adding some more reading benches and tables.
The project is expected to be finished by the end of this school year.
At Westminster, Gonzalez is a strong student taking several Advanced Placement courses.
She is involved in FBLA and DECA and won the Entrepreneurship Design and Precalculus Awards last year.
In addition, she was honored with the Presidential Service Award proving her commitment to philanthropy as both a sophomore and junior. It’s likely she’ll win again as a senior.
She’s in the National Honor Society, the National English Honor Society, and the National Business Honor Society.
This year, she was chosen as a student ambassador who takes the families of prospective students on tours of the school and speaks to them about the advantages of attending Westminster Christian.
“It is an honor to be able to share my perspective with families who are thinking about joining the Westminster family,” she says. “I am so excited to share how happy I am as a student at the school and what a great experience I had when I transferred.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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