By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Shawn Buxton sounds like a young man who knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it.

That’s how the Harmony High senior came to sign a letter of intent to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore at the school’s media center recently, where he will study neuroscience while also competing for the Blue Jays track team as a middle distance runner.

“I knew since before the eleventh grade that I wanted to go to Johns Hopkins, that’s why I did the early admission there,” he said.

As a runner who went to the Class 3A state cross country meet with his teammates two years ago, and as one of the school’s best at 800 meters in track, he had the athletic credentials to impress the Blue Jays’ coaching staff.

His academic numbers are perhaps more impressive: He carries a weighted 4.77 GPA and he is among the 1 percent of applicants who earned an ROTC scholarship, said his father, Harmony Resource Officer Victor Buxton.

“I’m so proud of Shawn. He made his own decisions and set his own path and it’s hard to argue with what he has accomplished,” Officer Buxton said.

Shawn Buxton ran four years for the Longhorns cross country and track teams under Coach Debra Schweiger.

“What you get from Shawn is good work ethic. He improves because you can coach him,” Schweiger said. “He ran the third leg of the 4 x 800 relay because you knew he was going to execute the transition for the final leg. That’s why we were able to have a lot of success in that event.”

Shawn Buxton said that running long distance (three miles) during the cross country season didn’t make him a fan of track’s distance events.

“I tried the 1,600 (meters) when I was a freshman, but I didn’t like it. I was better in the 400 and 800,” he said. “It was a better distance for me.”

Buxton will have company at Johns Hopkins. Track teammate Jared Beekman signed to the Baltimore school last month. He will play football and compete on the track team.

“It’s cool having Jared up there, too,” Shawn Buxton said.

“It’s a great school. There’s only about 5,500 students there, so it’s not totally different from what we’re used to here. It’s a great atmosphere.”

Buxton’s mother, Dani, said Shawn earned his scholarship through hard work and determination.

“He’s worthy of so many accolades, just the perfect son,” she said.

Jeremy Buxton, Shawn’s brother, played for Osceola’s 1998 state championship football team and now is an Air Force pilot. He saw many of his brother’s cross country and track meets over the past four years while stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

“I was very lucky to be around to see him grow up and accomplish all that he did, but, more than that, to see him grow up as a man,” Jeremy Buxton said.

“You couldn’t ask for a better brother.”

The Blue Jays compete in the NCAA Division III Centennial Conference under Coach Bobby Van Allen.