Every week The Shield will interview an athlete or coach about their life and the sport(s) they participate in. This week The Shield interviewed Kaylee Lane, a freshman sprinter, about track and what it’s like to be a student and an athlete.

Kaylee Lane is an undecided freshman, and while she hasn’t been here long, she has made a lasting impression.

In the past month, Lane has broken the 400-meter record, which hasn’t been done since 2015 with a time of 58.44 seconds. She was named GLVC Women’s Indoor Track Athletes of the Week for the first time in her career and was the first woman to be given that honor since 2015. Lane also broke the 600-meter record with a time of 1:40.10, beating the 1:41.21 in 2011.

Lane lead USI to victory on Jan. 21 at the Don DeNoon Invitational, beating her 400-meter record yet again, finishing 57.89 seconds, and finishing the 200-meter after 26.29 second which ranks second all-time at USI.

But even after all of these records, Lane doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do her life.

“I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do, but I know I’m leaning towards the health professions,” Lane said.

She said she had multiple coaches pushing her to do better and run faster in high school but she couldn’t quite break the barrier she needed to to run faster.

“Now I’m just trying to better my times,” Lane said. “It took me a really long time to get the times I am getting now because I was stuck running the 400. I started running 59 (seconds) in my freshman year (of high school) and it wasn’t until my senior year that I finally broke that barrier and started running faster times.”

She said in college the competition is extremely different: the people are faster, the competition is tougher.

“I’m just taking it meet by meet right now,” Lane said.