Sports have been present in sophomore Xander Kilner’s life ever since he first picked up a hockey stick at the age of four. 

Born in Stevenson, Washington, Kilner moved to Portland, Oregon when he was still a toddler, and after starting with ice hockey, he has experimented with different sports at every available opportunity. 

Over the years he has dabbled in everything from basketball to soccer and swimming, and hopes to continue pushing his comfort zone with football and volleyball in the future.

However, even the sports he has loved, and wanted to keep participating in, haven’t always been easy. 

“When it was eighth grade, I decided to take a break from hockey because I hadn’t hit my growth spurt and other kids had, he said. “So when you have a 200-pound skater chasing after you and he wants to bash your brains in, and you’re only like 80 pounds, it changes your perspective a little bit.”

In terms of academics, Kilner went to Morningstar Montessori House of Children for kindergarten before moving to Franciscan Montessori Earth School in first grade. He transferred schools multiple times during the pandemic, but ended up choosing to come to La Salle for high school. 

“I have ADHD and dyslexia, and those are things that I don’t like asking for help with, but La Salle has very, very good stuff with helping people with that,” he said.

Aside from academics, he has felt more welcomed by La Salle’s community, he said. 

“I shadowed at both Central and Jesuit, and both of them seemed very, very formal,” he said. “I just wasn’t as comfortable as I was at La Salle,” he said 

During his academic career, he said participating in many sports, alongside procrastination, has made school’s workload difficult at times, but have also fundamentally affected his outlook on life. 

“Because of sports, my favorite type of activities in class — and just things — are group activities,” he said. “I love contributing, working together to a common goal. And it builds friendships. It builds your social skills, and it’s extremely important. Definitely without sports, I would be a totally different person.”

Off the pitch, field, or wherever he is playing, acting and theater have taken the center stage.  

Not only are they crucial to where he is going in the future, but they have informed how he spends his free time, Kilner said. 

“I love Dungeons & Dragons,” he said. “It’s basically just acting, but [a] board game instead of a stage.”

While he originally was not confident if he would go to college given his dislike for traditional academics, he said things have changed recently, especially with his interest in theater. 

“I’m gonna see if I can get into some film schools and some acting schools, but I’ll do Reserve Officers’ Training Corps on the side,” he said. 

The ROTC offers training to be an officer while at the same time providing full-ride scholarships to many colleges.

“I can go get a major in acting or music or something like that, but then I can still have a career [in the military] that has been open set up for me and has completely paid for my college right there, next to me, if I want it and if I need it.”

However, for the moment sports aren’t taking a backseat anytime soon, and he hopes to join volleyball this spring and football his junior year.

“My ideal year is a sport every season,” he said. “If I can do football during the fall, swimming during the winter and volleyball during the spring, that would be most ideal.”