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Getting To Know Lauren Reed
February 15, 2023 | Track & Field
Continuing on with the "Getting To Know" series, we had a chance to catch up with freshman jumper Lauren Reed. Reed went to school at Long Beach Poly and scored in the triple jump and reached the long jump final at the 2022 CIF Championships.
Q: What brought you to USC?
LR: There was a lot of factors that brought me to USC. The track team is great. The recruiting process was wonderful. I love all the coaches, the school, you can't beat a USC education.
Q: Was there the idea that you wanted to stay kind of close to home? Or were you trying to venture out, or what were you trying to do in your initial process before deciding to come to USC?
LR: Well, one of my biggest things was I wanted to stay close to home. I didn't want to go out that far, and I wanted to stay in California because I can't do the cold. The snow, the rain, the crazy weather. I can't do it. I wanted to stay in California.
Q: How are you dealing with this weather right now? I know it's a little bit chillier California terms.
LR: It's a little chilly, but I hear my friends telling me, "Oh, it's snowing over here"… and I'm just, grateful that it's just a little windy.
Q: When you were going through your recruitment process, was there a moment that you were like, "Okay, I'm firmly going to USC," like did the coaches say something or were there other factors involved?
LR: What really solidified it for me was after my meeting with our head coach, Coach [Quincy] Watts. He was like, "I got you Lauren. These next four years, I got you." And I didn't really get that type of energy from any of the other coaches that were recruiting me. In that moment, I was like, okay, USC is the school.
Q: How has practice been so far and adapting to a new team, especially coming in seeing this is way different than high school?
LR: Yeah, it's a lot more intense, I would say. It's a lot more intense because it's a lot more high stakes in college. You're a student athlete. You're expected to juggle a lot more. Education is very important, you have to stay on top of your school. And then also you have to stay on top of your training, what you eat, your recovery. Everything is just very, it's just high level, I would say.
Q: Especially being a student athlete. It's almost like a full-time job. How do you balance that? The work, the play, the study, and all of those things together?
LR: I think the biggest thing is making time for everything. You have your times where you're at practice, you have your times where you need to be doing your homework, you have times that you should be in recovery. You just have to plan out your day.
Q: I know you said you want to stay home and you love California. What are some of your favorite things that you like to do around this area? Do you love the beach? Do you love going to the mountain side of things? What is that one factor that truly draws you here?
LR: I really like going to the beach with my friends, that's a really fun thing. And honestly, I'm a homebody, so like just staying home and being with my family. I come from a really big family. So just staying home with my family, like family nights, or game nights, or movie nights, whatever we do as a family. It's just really important to me.
Q: Do you ever go running on the beach or practice your craft on the beach?
LR: I've practiced on the beach before. It's very hard. It's not the most fun thing to train on the beach, but it does help a lot. I used to go with my dad and train, or with old coaches. Now we don't go to the beach as much because we're training. We'll do pool workout sometimes but not so much the beach.
Q: And then obviously L.A. and everything around is mainly known for its food and stuff like that. What is some of your favorite meals either that you cook or that you get out somewhere?
LR: There's this really good pasta place by USC called Pasta Roma. My mom works around L.A., like minutes probably from campus, so I would eat out with her around these places before I even came here. So Pasta Roma was really good. There's this ramen place and I forgot what it's called. It's around USC. All the things in The Village are really good, especially the taco place. That taco place is really good.
Q: So what are some of your hobbies outside of track & field?
LR: One of the big things I did in high school outside of like track and field stuff, I babysat a lot. I do a lot of babysitting. I really love working with kids. It's really fun.
Q: Is there anything that you do in your free time that kind of gets you mentally reset?
LR: I think a big thing would be like decompressing once you get home, and like letting it go if you had a bad practice or a bad day in class, whatever. Just letting it go, relaxing, and not taking that energy into the next day.
Q: What do you like to do to unwind at the end of the day? Are you a binge-watch type of person or board games?
LR: I really like watching movies or Netflix. I'll binge watch a show, like I'll just like dedicate my whole life to watching shows that week or whatever. I really enjoy binge watching shows.
Q: What's your favorite show right now if you had to pick one?
LR: Jane the Virgin, I just started it. It's like a telenovela kind of, and it's really interesting. I like that form of media because the craziest things can happen. You just have to roll with it.
Q: You're majoring in real estate development. What do you want to do post-college?
LR: Well right now, my goal would be to be a real estate agent, and like sell houses and stuff. So I'm not much in like the development world. And I'm thinking of maybe switching my major to finance and accounting and then minoring in real estate finance. But yeah, the goal would be to either be like an accountant or a real estate agent.
Q: What are some of your goals for this year or going forward?
LR: Well in the sports world, I'd like to start jumping 20 feet consistently. In high school, I didn't have consistent training because of COVID and everything that happened. My senior year was my first year of full, full training, and I did really well with that. Now I'm here with better training, better lifting programs, better recovery. Then for an academic side, I plan to keep my GPA above a 3.6, which I did last semester, so I plan on keeping it above that, especially if I want to switch into the business program. And then a social goal of mine is to make more friends that aren't athletes. I feel like we just get so consumed in the student-athlete world. It's like all my friends are the track people or the volleyball girls or the soccer girls. It's just, you've got to get out of that bubble and realize there's other people at the school.
Q: What is your favorite thing so far? Being here at USC?
LR: I'd have to say the people. I mean, because they're just so fun to be around. It's really fun for me because most of the track freshmen live in one building, but I applied for housing late, so I live in a different building with the volleyball girls. It's like I'm like constantly in both worlds. I have my friends on the volleyball team and I have my friends on the track team. When one of them's traveling, I'm with the other, when the other one's traveling, I'm with the other. It's really fun to be so close with everyone.
Q: What brought you to USC?
LR: There was a lot of factors that brought me to USC. The track team is great. The recruiting process was wonderful. I love all the coaches, the school, you can't beat a USC education.
Q: Was there the idea that you wanted to stay kind of close to home? Or were you trying to venture out, or what were you trying to do in your initial process before deciding to come to USC?
LR: Well, one of my biggest things was I wanted to stay close to home. I didn't want to go out that far, and I wanted to stay in California because I can't do the cold. The snow, the rain, the crazy weather. I can't do it. I wanted to stay in California.
Q: How are you dealing with this weather right now? I know it's a little bit chillier California terms.
LR: It's a little chilly, but I hear my friends telling me, "Oh, it's snowing over here"… and I'm just, grateful that it's just a little windy.
Q: When you were going through your recruitment process, was there a moment that you were like, "Okay, I'm firmly going to USC," like did the coaches say something or were there other factors involved?
LR: What really solidified it for me was after my meeting with our head coach, Coach [Quincy] Watts. He was like, "I got you Lauren. These next four years, I got you." And I didn't really get that type of energy from any of the other coaches that were recruiting me. In that moment, I was like, okay, USC is the school.
Q: How has practice been so far and adapting to a new team, especially coming in seeing this is way different than high school?
LR: Yeah, it's a lot more intense, I would say. It's a lot more intense because it's a lot more high stakes in college. You're a student athlete. You're expected to juggle a lot more. Education is very important, you have to stay on top of your school. And then also you have to stay on top of your training, what you eat, your recovery. Everything is just very, it's just high level, I would say.
Q: Especially being a student athlete. It's almost like a full-time job. How do you balance that? The work, the play, the study, and all of those things together?
LR: I think the biggest thing is making time for everything. You have your times where you're at practice, you have your times where you need to be doing your homework, you have times that you should be in recovery. You just have to plan out your day.
Q: I know you said you want to stay home and you love California. What are some of your favorite things that you like to do around this area? Do you love the beach? Do you love going to the mountain side of things? What is that one factor that truly draws you here?
LR: I really like going to the beach with my friends, that's a really fun thing. And honestly, I'm a homebody, so like just staying home and being with my family. I come from a really big family. So just staying home with my family, like family nights, or game nights, or movie nights, whatever we do as a family. It's just really important to me.
Q: Do you ever go running on the beach or practice your craft on the beach?
LR: I've practiced on the beach before. It's very hard. It's not the most fun thing to train on the beach, but it does help a lot. I used to go with my dad and train, or with old coaches. Now we don't go to the beach as much because we're training. We'll do pool workout sometimes but not so much the beach.
Q: And then obviously L.A. and everything around is mainly known for its food and stuff like that. What is some of your favorite meals either that you cook or that you get out somewhere?
LR: There's this really good pasta place by USC called Pasta Roma. My mom works around L.A., like minutes probably from campus, so I would eat out with her around these places before I even came here. So Pasta Roma was really good. There's this ramen place and I forgot what it's called. It's around USC. All the things in The Village are really good, especially the taco place. That taco place is really good.
Q: So what are some of your hobbies outside of track & field?
LR: One of the big things I did in high school outside of like track and field stuff, I babysat a lot. I do a lot of babysitting. I really love working with kids. It's really fun.
Q: Is there anything that you do in your free time that kind of gets you mentally reset?
LR: I think a big thing would be like decompressing once you get home, and like letting it go if you had a bad practice or a bad day in class, whatever. Just letting it go, relaxing, and not taking that energy into the next day.
Q: What do you like to do to unwind at the end of the day? Are you a binge-watch type of person or board games?
LR: I really like watching movies or Netflix. I'll binge watch a show, like I'll just like dedicate my whole life to watching shows that week or whatever. I really enjoy binge watching shows.
Q: What's your favorite show right now if you had to pick one?
LR: Jane the Virgin, I just started it. It's like a telenovela kind of, and it's really interesting. I like that form of media because the craziest things can happen. You just have to roll with it.
Q: You're majoring in real estate development. What do you want to do post-college?
LR: Well right now, my goal would be to be a real estate agent, and like sell houses and stuff. So I'm not much in like the development world. And I'm thinking of maybe switching my major to finance and accounting and then minoring in real estate finance. But yeah, the goal would be to either be like an accountant or a real estate agent.
Q: What are some of your goals for this year or going forward?
LR: Well in the sports world, I'd like to start jumping 20 feet consistently. In high school, I didn't have consistent training because of COVID and everything that happened. My senior year was my first year of full, full training, and I did really well with that. Now I'm here with better training, better lifting programs, better recovery. Then for an academic side, I plan to keep my GPA above a 3.6, which I did last semester, so I plan on keeping it above that, especially if I want to switch into the business program. And then a social goal of mine is to make more friends that aren't athletes. I feel like we just get so consumed in the student-athlete world. It's like all my friends are the track people or the volleyball girls or the soccer girls. It's just, you've got to get out of that bubble and realize there's other people at the school.
Q: What is your favorite thing so far? Being here at USC?
LR: I'd have to say the people. I mean, because they're just so fun to be around. It's really fun for me because most of the track freshmen live in one building, but I applied for housing late, so I live in a different building with the volleyball girls. It's like I'm like constantly in both worlds. I have my friends on the volleyball team and I have my friends on the track team. When one of them's traveling, I'm with the other, when the other one's traveling, I'm with the other. It's really fun to be so close with everyone.
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