This year, sophomore Jillian Craeton Raddle is hoping to venture out of her comfort zone and strengthen her relationships. Craeton Raddle, a self-described extrovert, finds it easy to make friends and really values the friendships she has made at La Salle. “It’s easy for me to make conversation with people,” she said. “So it was easy to make friends if they were willing to be friends with me.”

Her favorite part about La Salle is the people. “I have made some really good friends that I’d like to keep for a long time,” she said. 

Over the summer, Craeton Raddle’s friends inspired her to go outside of her comfort zone and have fun. “During freshman year, I was very goody-two-shoes, sticking to my assignments, scared to venture out and stuff,” she said. “But during the summer I had a little more fun which has made me relax a little bit and be less anxious this school year.” 

Craeton Raddle is currently playing on the varsity girls soccer team and loves it. “I have been doing soccer for a really long time, several years, so naturally I went into the soccer program because it is a sport that I have been doing for so long,” she said. Soccer is also a way for her to be active and unwind after a stressful day at school.

Being a new player on the varsity team, Craeton Raddle hopes to improve her soccer skills and bond with her teammates more. “A goal I have is to get better and to be more comfortable with people who are on my team because I just came onto varsity and I don’t have that much playing time, so it’s been kind of hard to connect with the girls,” she said.

Outside of school and sports, Craeton Raddle loves to make art, cook, and watch Disney movies. Her favorite Disney movies are “Tangled” and “Finding Nemo.”

Something she is extremely passionate about is cooking. “I love cooking and baking so much,” she said. “I would say I’m pretty good at it, but I would always love to get better.” One of the reasons she loves cooking is because “there’s no right or wrong, you just kind of experiment with whatever, and once you learn that about cooking it just makes it so much more fun.”

Although she does not have a lot of time to cook during the school year, Craeton Raddle frequently cooks for her family in the summer. “If people try my cooking or whatever I make, they’re usually happy, so I’m proud of that, that I can make people happy,” she said. 

Next year, Craeton Raddle is looking forward to taking Biology because she loves animals and anything nature-related. 

Craeton Raddle doesn’t have any specific plans for college, but she wants to do something related to the outdoors. “If I could get anything that has to do with nature in any sort of way whatsoever, I know that’s very generic, but if I could do that and be successful then I’m good to go,” Craeton Raddle said.

One of the most valuable lessons Craeton Raddle has learned is to let things go. “I’ve held on to way too many things in my life, and I’m slowly learning to let all that go and just relax. I’m working on relaxing and being less anxious,” she said.

Having been an anxious person her freshman year, Craeton Raddle hopes that this year’s freshmen aren’t scared like she was. Some advice she gave is “to not care what other people think…because they’re not paying attention to you as much as you think,” she said.