AUSTIN, Texas — While it’s a sport he loves, basketball is just one of many hobbies for Northeast Early College High School senior Austin Tharp. 

“I’m also catcher for the baseball team. I also ran cross country this year. I’m in athletic training in the fall,” Tharp said. 

The teen does his best to bring positivity and leadership with him no matter what sport he’s playing.

“I think of myself as kind of the counter balance. When everyone is up, I’m up with them,” he says, "But when everyone is down, I try to bring everything up with me.”

The teen is also giving back in big ways through his Eagle Scout project.

“We took these older laptops that are slower and people don’t use them and find a way that we could refurbish them, fix them up. Install new software and everything, make them usable once again and give them to the people that actually need them and can use them,” he explained.

All these activities and project haven’t impacted his grades. He’s projected to graduate this year as seventh in his class with higher than a 4.0 grade point average. And he already knows where he’ll be, and what he’ll be doing in college.

“I’m going to the University of Texas at Austin. I made it into the School of Arts, so I’m majoring in studio arts,” he says.

The Spectrum News 1 Scholar Athlete Program recognizes exceptional public high school student athletes with academic scholarship awards of $1,000 each for use towards college expenses. If you know a teen you’d like to nominate, click here to learn more.