While stereotypically, theatre kids and jocks have been thought of as polar opposites, and aside from “High School
Musical’s” Troy Bolton, being both is not common. Junior Caleb Ingram, though, has been pushing back on this stereotype for years, doing both sports and theatre on a weekly basis.
Last year, Ingram played on the varsity football team, and at the same time was the lead in the spring musical, “Hadestown.” He is also on the track team in addition to keeping up with the performing arts schedule, and does not plan on quitting either anytime soon.
“The only way to balance it is you need to communicate with everyone good. And there has to be organization and a willingness to allow students to do multiple things from coaches and teachers,” Ingram said. “If they weren’t flexible in allowing me to do multiple things, it wouldn’t be able to happen.”
Ingram has also been doing chorus since middle school and is a member of Show Choir. The director, Eric Wilkinson, oversees Ingram and encourages him to keep pursuing both, as he himself was an athlete in high school.
“The reason it works well for him is he just works hard at everything. He’s a hardworking guy. So he works hard in class, he works hard in practices, after school rehearsals, that’s just part of who he is,” Wilkinson said.
Even though they seem like an unlikely mix, Ingram has found that sports and performing arts end up benefiting one another in the long run.
“In theater… people get emotional at the intensity of the director and will be like, ‘he’s being too mean,’” Ingram said. “From a background of having done football, it doesn’t phase me… after
getting yelled at for putting my foot the wrong direction, and then having to do bear crawls for100 yards because of that.”
Though it may come as a shock to some, professional football players who take dance classes has been a common occurrence for decades, even as far back as the greats Lynn Swann and Herschel Walker. So though it may seem hard to picture an NFL player dancing ballet, it is not as out there as it sounds.
“Dancing is so good for balance… not so much agility, but like balance and stability helps a ton in sports as well. There’s been a lot of… linemen that have done ballet to help with footwork,” Ingram said.
Performing arts and sports, although thought of as vastly different, are able to coexist. While they may be perceived as stark opposites, they are far more alike and both have made a positive impact on Ingram’s life.
“I would say a real good way that both of them were very similar is you get similar senses of community in both of them,” Ingram said. “I think you get good friends, like deep bonds, with people that you do theater with or people that you do sports with, especially team sports… if one person messes up, one person isn’t doing their job, it throws everybody off. I mean, if one person sings bad in a song, you notice it, if a lineman doesn’t block, [the] quarterback gets sacked, I think there’s just a lot of teamwork and… through that, you build a community.”
