Whether she is captaining the volleyball team, running the Eye of the Storm, baking in her kitchen, or serving the community, Oliva Lee ‘24 can do it all.
A current senior at St. Luke’s School, Lee seems to tap her toe into every puddle of the SLS experience. It is a wonder how she is so skilled in many different activities and still keeps up with the bustle of school life.
Lee came to St. Luke’s as a freshman, and since the start of her time at SLS, she has always been a member of the varsity volleyball team. Her balancing act with school and other activities began as soon as she joined the team. However, since then, her responsibilities on the team have grown as she stepped up as a captain in her junior year.
“I knew that I was going up against four seniors who were running to be a captain, but I wanted to run [in my junior year] because I felt that I just had a lot I could help the team with, and I had a lot of good ideas of how we could be organized as a team,” said Lee.
However, her role as captain has since changed. Now she is the only senior captain on the team, taking on more responsibilities than she did before.
“I almost didn’t feel like a captain last year in a sense…. I was a junior, and then there were two seniors, so I let them make most of the decisions….In the beginning of this season, I felt like I was taking on more of a leadership role,” Lee added.
Lee also participates in club volleyball outside of school. Club volleyball begins right after the fall semester at SLS, so Lee continues to play all year round in addition to her school work and other extracurriculars.
Club volleyball “is definitely a longer time commitment… It was five to six days a week, and each of these days, I could be playing for three hours… In terms of the volleyball playing, it’s much higher level,” Lee stated.
However, Lee participates in more than just volleyball.
“I just like filling my life with different activities that could just be literally anything that you could think of… I want to be just doing something at all times,” Lee said.
As head of Eye of the Storm, Lee constantly finds herself “…filming videos, doing podcasts, and learning more about individuals and what they are doing around the school.”
Lee joined Eye of the Storm in ninth grade as a way to become a part of her new St. Luke’s community. Now, it has become one of the many activities she has taken a leadership position in during her high school career.
While she handles her work with grace, it does sometimes get difficult for her to balance her school work with all of her activities.
“I try to always have a schedule in my brain… because I just need to have it all organized in my head,” Lee noted. “I definitely have a lot to do because after volleyball practice today… I’ll be able to start my homework, then I have to leave time for Eye of the Storm. There have been times where I was super overwhelmed with [the work].”
Not only is Lee a real ace in her activities, but in school as well. Lee excels at all of her classes, especially math and science. She took both Honors Algebra 2 with Trigonometry and Advanced Physics over her sophomore and junior years. The love for these classes then led her down another road: Mechanical Engineering.
Lee fell in love with the class during a furniture design project. She realized that she wanted to continue studying engineering in college.“…I just had a lot of fun with [the project], and I was super creative with it,” said Lee. “I made it more challenging than it needed to be because it was super complicated… and I think it turned out pretty good.”
Despite all the stresses of school and her extracurriculars, Lee tries not to let the extra work bother her throughout the school day, and her teachers and friends notice.
“Liv is always super fun to be around…. She lights up every room she is in,” noted her classmate, Sofia Staikos.
“Liv is poised and creative. She is confident in her skills while continuing to learn and grow…. I remember there being times when she actually put in extra time to get ahead or finish earlier,” said her engineering teacher, Matt Goodman.
However, despite the additional work that it brings Lee, she hopes to continue balancing many of these same activities with college as she continues to study engineering.
One can only wonder what Olivia will do in college and what other potential activities she may pick up along the way.
