Sand, sand everywhere
Senior Carrington Motley spends a lot of his time at MIT surrounded by sand. “Yeah, sand is everywhere,” he admits with a laugh. “It was already in all of my clothes, and now it’s in my backpack.” Motley, a mechanical engineering major, is captain of MIT’s men’s track and field team — and when he isn’t launching himself into a sand pit during triple-jump practice, he conducts research on how tires move through sand. Finding a balance Motley didn’t always know he would end up at MIT, nor did he expect to enter his senior year less than a foot away from MIT’s varsity triple-jump record. As a sophomore at Sewickley Academy in Pennsylvania, after a long basketball season, a teammate of his persuaded him to try track and field. Motley developed into a competitive triple jumper, and when he began to look at colleges, he knew he needed to find a place where he...