Delaware Christian’s Harp aims for vet school

Sarah Harp

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Delaware Chris­t­ian School senior Sarah Harp is look­ing at an addi­tional eight years of school after she grad­u­ates this spring.

List­ing 2020 as the year in which she expects to grad­u­ate has given her pause, she admits, but she is determined.

“I thought that is a long time,” Sarah said smiling.

Sarah will be attend­ing Ohio State Uni­ver­sity at Mar­ion for the first part of her col­lege career, after which she plans to attend the main cam­pus where she hopes even­tu­ally to get into vet school.

She plans to go into large ani­mal prac­tice, some­thing she has wanted to do since she was 4 years old.

“I grew up on a farm. I’ve always helped with the cat­tle and horses. And grandpa has sheep, ponies and cat­tle,” she said.

Sarah said she would like to stay in Ohio, a goal that her career path should allow for.

“We have a hard time find­ing a large ani­mal vet for us. It’s one field that’s really look­ing for peo­ple,” she said.

Because there is a risk of get­ting hurt work­ing with ani­mals, she plans to major in biol­ogy and not ani­mal sci­ence, so she will have a broader back­ground once she gets older or is hurt on the job. With biol­ogy, she can also teach, she said.

Sarah has expe­ri­ence han­dling larger ani­mals. She has raised and shown cat­tle through 4-H since she was 9, and has shown sheep for the last four years.

Sarah said she likes cat­tle and sheep, but her favorite ani­mal of all is birds, any bird.

“I love chick­ens,” she said, adding she has raised them since she was 5, sell­ing the eggs for her col­lege fund. Her col­lege isn’t com­pletely paid for, but she is work­ing on it.

Her love of chick­ens has earned her the nick­name Sage Chick, within the Sin­gle Action Shoot­ing Soci­ety. After a neigh­bor got her father and brother inter­ested in the sport, she decided to try it as well. She was only 8 years old at the time.

“The more I got into it, the more com­pet­i­tive it became,” she said. Learn­ing to shoot two pis­tols, a shot­gun and a rifle, Sarah has cap­tured five world cham­pi­onships in com­pe­ti­tion in New Mexico.

“I like the rifle best,” she said, adding that the com­pe­ti­tion is fun because she is required to dress in period costumes.

She has not returned since win­ning the world cham­pi­onship in 2010 because with her sports sched­ule, there was no time to go. And now, “unfor­tu­nately this year, I need to get a job.” But, Sarah said, she still hopes to par­tic­i­pate in local matches around the state.

Attend­ing Delaware Chris­t­ian since kinder­garten, Sarah has played both vol­ley­ball and bas­ket­ball for six years, run track for two years and played soft­ball for three years.

“Vol­ley­ball is my favorite,” she said. She is not cer­tain she can con­tinue the sport in col­lege, how­ever. She said her major will be too demand­ing. She added that she has not ruled out play­ing her fresh­man year at Marion.

Her cur­rent course load also keeps her busy — she is tak­ing mar­riage and fam­ily, gov­ern­ment, Eng­lish, cal­cu­lus, anatomy and physics this year.

Mary Ellen Tobin is Sarah’s math teacher.

“Sarah is one of the most ded­i­cated and hard-working stu­dents I have ever had. She is very bright, engaged in and con­tribut­ing to the AP Cal­cu­lus class. Her stan­dards are set very high and then she sets out to achieve them. Lead­er­ship and ser­vice mark her years here at DCS. Sarah’s integrity and char­ac­ter are of the high­est qual­ity. I will really miss Sarah next year!” Tobin said.

Steve Hovda is the school’s Bible teacher.

“Sarah is an alert, highly dis­ci­plined, ener­getic stu­dent, who strives for excel­lence with every chal­lenge. She seems to be dri­ven from within rather than to rely on exter­nal moti­va­tion, mak­ing teach­ing her both enjoy­able and men­tally stim­u­lat­ing. She is not purely aca­d­e­mic. Sarah’s ‘wheels’ are turn­ing. She has held my feet to the fire on more than a few occa­sions. She will be missed for her class­room involve­ment, her stu­dent lead­er­ship, her ath­letic and musi­cal con­tri­bu­tion and her spir­i­tual dimen­sion,” he said.

Sarah is vice pres­i­dent of her class and on stu­dent coun­cil as well. Most of her vol­un­teer work is con­ducted through school or 4-H, where she has helped at the humane soci­ety and the free store as well as with trash pick up crews.

With her small close-knit senior class spend­ing time together when they can, includ­ing on the senior trip to Myr­tle Beach, Sarah admit­ted it will be dif­fi­cult to say good­bye to friends. But many are stay­ing in Ohio, she said, and sev­eral will actu­ally be attend­ing Ohio State.

She also was able to meet new friends when she was selected by her elec­tric coop­er­a­tive to travel to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. with other stu­dents from around the country.

“It was def­i­nitely good to be thrown on a bus with peo­ple I’ve never met,” she laughed, “I def­i­nitely had a good time.”

Sarah offers the fol­low­ing advice to underclassmen.

“Don’t waste the years you have when you are younger. Enjoy time with friends, and put forth effort in things like sports and aca­d­e­mics. You want no regrets. You can’t change these things once you are in high school.”

She talked about her own changes.

“I came into senior year emo­tion­ally not very happy to leave high school. The last night at vol­ley­ball was not good,” she said. “But I’m ready to leave now. I know once I grad­u­ate, my rela­tion­ships with friends will change.”

Sarah is the daugh­ter of Rod­ney and Eliz­a­beth Harp of Sunbury.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Apr 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.