Payton Clark may not have started out as a trailblazer, but she certainly became one Thursday as the 2020 Highland Baptist grad signed to run cross country and track & field at East Texas Baptist University in Marshall, Texas, about halfway between Shreveport and Dallas.

Sher becomes the first female cross country athlete from the school to sign to run in college.

“I’m going to be running cross country and track & field,” Clark said. “I just like the environment there and I just felt at home.

“I made a trip up there last week and attended orientation and it felt good.”

Clark spent the last year at LSU Eunice before she signed with ETBU. She said the coaches will use that at a red-shirt year so that she can have four years to run.

“I had been at LSUE and had been practicing with Coach Toby (Blissett, HBCS cross country coach) and with other coaches and had been working out and I got a call one morning and the coaches at East Texas told me that I had made the team.”

Clark will be a trail blazer in another aspect as well.

She is slated to run cross country in the fall, which is college is the equivalent of a 6K (3.6 miles) race but in the spring will run sprints for the track team.

“I’ll do the 100 (meters), 200 and 4×100,” Clark said. “It’s funny but it’s just natural for me to do that.”

Blissett said that he and the rest of the Highland Baptist family were proud of Clark and what she was able to accomplish. The HBCS coach said that Clark was a member of the cross country district team titles in 2018-19 and that she led the team to fourth place finishes at state both years.

“The East Texas coach told me that the one thing she most liked about Payton was her energy and enthusiasm,” Blissett said. “That’s Payton. Whatever we asked her to do she did and she gave it her all with joy and enthusiasm.”

Clark plans to study pre-physical therapy at ETSB and then work on becoming a physical therapist.