CUMBERLAND COUNTY, N.C. — Katie Matthews got into bowling her junior year after a friend convinced her to try it.

The Spectrum News High School Scholars Program honors outstanding students with a scholarship

Katie Matthews is a senior at Gray’s Creek High School and loves trying new activities or hobbies

Matthews is on the bowling team, part of the yearbook club and a member of the National Honor Society

Matthews plans to study forensic pathology at Western Carolina in the fall

“Bowling is like that one sport where, A, you're not very active and, B, if you suck, everybody like has a good laugh about it because they're not really that much better,” said Matthews, a senior at Gray’s Creek High School.

During her junior year her school’s entire girls team made it to states and she was the only member of her team to make it to girl’s individual states.

“That's why I decided to do it again in senior year because it was fun. Yeah, Olivia was like, ‘Katie join the bowling team with me.’ So I joined the bowling team with her,” Matthews said.

Matthews will be the first to admit she has a lot of interests.

“I do get bored. I'll be honest,” Matthews said. “But there's always something else that I can look at and be like, ‘Yeah, that sounds fun.’”

She fosters dogs, is a member of the National Honor Society and participated in an international travel education experience to China. So it only makes sense that she’d be interested in foreign languages like the French class she took at her school.

“In a language class in high school, you learn how to say your name and then you move on to school supplies. That way if I ever went to France and got lost, I could tell them my name, my age and what I had in my backpack,” Matthews said as she laughed.

She’s also involved in her high school’s yearbook club, promoting senior advertisements and writing for the bi-monthly newsletter, a position she takes pretty seriously.

“Last year I decided to join the yearbook team, and that's been an event because it's not a breath of fresh air, but it's serious. So I'm part of the sales team and you have to sell stuff. I made phone calls to businesses. I had to be all professional. I had to go in person and talk to them, and it was like, ‘wow.’ Because I didn't think I'd ever have to do that in high school,” Matthews said.

For someone who is pretty content with trying hobbies and exploring new interests, she says she’s thought long and hard about what she wanted to study in college.

“I think I wanted to mostly be a doctor always. I went from chef to like astronaut, you know, like a kid does,” Matthews said. “And then I was like doctor and then I was like, ‘Well, do I trust myself with a person who's alive?’”“I think I wanted to mostly be a doctor always. I went from chef to like astronaut, you know, like a kid does,” Matthews said. “And then I was like doctor and then I was like, ‘Well, do I trust myself with a person who's alive?’”

She credits "NCIS," one of her favorite shows, for helping her land on forensic pathologist as her future career.

“The joke I always make is that, you know, at least my hand doesn't have to be so steady.” Matthews said.

Cumberland County state Sen. Val Applewhite visited Gray’s Creek High School to present a $1,000 scholarship to Matthews as the scholar of the week.

“I like to thank Spectrum News 1 for providing this scholarship, whenever we have the opportunity to catch our young people doing things right, that's what's really important. We want to prepare our students of the future, our workforce, sending them to college without having them go into debt,”  Applewhite said.

Matthews will be attending Western Carolina in the fall.

Spectrum News is proud to honor and showcase students who are outstanding in the classroom and involved in their community.