Lanier Christian student driven by faith, parents' guidance
May 27—Worship service was getting a little dull at Lanier Christian Academy until Raegan Blake and her best friend decided to start their own.
A graduating senior at Lanier Christian, a religious private school in Gainesville, starting a student-led worship team is just one example of Blake's go-getter attitude.
"She knows a lot of people so she asked a ton of the students that she knew were talented in that area, and we were able to make it happen," said her friend Abby Butte. "Everyone has absolutely loved it. Every single time we do worship at our school, they're like, 'Wow, it's so much better than it used to be.'"
Class of 2023
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A student at Lanier Christian Academy since first grade, Blake will graduate this month with a host of accolades to her name. As vice president of the National Honors Society, she will graduate with a 4.0 GPA and has been the beta club president at her school for the last three years.
She was also awarded the Coffey Scholarship from Southern Adventist University's School of Journalism and Communications, where she plans to attend and study advertising. She received the Zell Miller Scholarship and the Leadership Scholarship from Chick-fil-a where she works.
When asked what drives her, she credited her Christian faith, her parents guidance and the toughness imparted by her two older brothers.
"They toughened me up," she said of her brothers. "Instead of playing with girly toys, I'd play with transformers and Legos."
And tough, she is.
One day in seventh grade she was playing in the gym during physical education class and ran into an electrical box, slicing her knee open. She had to have surgery and underwent physical therapy.
For most her age, the experience would have been somewhat traumatic, but Blake has the sort of disposition that allows her to see the silver lining when bad things happen. (It also didn't hurt that her parents are professional physical therapists, which smoothed the path of her recovery.)
"It wasn't fun in the moment," she said, "but it made me appreciate a lot of things."
She even described the physical therapy as "fun" because, like her parents, she is fascinated by the body's ability to recover from injury.
It's that sort of glass-half-full attitude that makes her successful — and popular on campus.
"Everybody loves her. She's very fun to be around. She's the life of the party, and she's a great leader. All the young children look up to her," Butte said. "She's never really in the spotlight much because she tries to keep herself out of it, but she wholeheartedly deserves it."
