Some athletes can finish their entire career without being able to call themselves a champion. However, his is not a problem that Coppell High School senior discus thrower Colin Echols will have. A throw of 195’5” sealed the deal, winning Echols the Class 6A championship,  leading to an accomplished goal that goes back to his time at Coppell Middle School East.

“I started [discus] in seventh grade, and wanted to get the record there.” Echols said, “So I put a lot of hard work in there with my coach [CMS East teacher] Tyler Horner and finally broke the record in eighth grade.”

Discus is a mental game. Much like golf, you are competing with yourself just as much as you are with the field. Each time you set a new personal record, it’s a small victory, but the hunger to get better has to be the one thing driving you to succeed.

“It’s an individual performance.” Echols said. “Nothing is based off of others it how you perform that moment or that second.”

Echols is a goal oriented man, from the time he started at East he was determined to break his middle and high school records as well as win state, and in his final year to accomplish those goals he succeeded.

This success in high school can be partially attributed to a tough decision Echols made after sophomore year. Since middle school he had played both basketball and thrown discus for his school, yet he felt that if he focussed on one that he would begin to excel.

“Right after I quit basketball, I started to put weight on and reached 240 pounds by my junior year.” Echols said. “This year I weigh around 270 pounds and that was an area my [private] coach wanted me to improve on. The change has really helped with my strength.”

This decision undoubtedly set him on the path to be able to throw a discus over 190’. At 6’5” he truly filled out his frame to become one of the biggest competitors at the state meet.

While he may have been the champion this year, the state experience was not a new one to the CHS senior. Last year he placed second, but the opportunity gave him invaluable experience.

“He is a very determined young man, has a great work ethic by knowing what he wants and then has the ability to go out and do it,” Coppell track coach Karl Pointer said. “Being able to maintain calm and stay smooth throughout the throw, he was the calm and collected one because he had been there before.”

A state championship  is usually something high school athletes only dream of. Colin Echols shares that dream with most of us, yet his work ethic and insatiable desire culminated in being the 2016 Class 6A Texas State Champion.