Caroline Tornquist
H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program
When Caroline Tornquist started middle school at H-B Woodlawn, the school had just one organized sport: Ultimate Frisbee. So she threw herself into it with a vengeance. She made the junior varsity team in eighth grade and, by her senior year, was co-captain of the varsity team. She has twice won national championships with her youth club team and has played for an elite adult women’s club team since 10th grade. This summer she’ll play on Team USA in the World Junior Ultimate Championships in Canada. “The ideal player is tall,” she says, “which I’m not, but my strength is speed and really good footwork.”
She’s a force off the field, too. As a service project for a leadership class at H-B, Tornquist joined the countywide Healthy Relationships Task Force, a student-led initiative dedicated to educating teens about healthy dating. She also developed a class in which she teaches eighth-graders how to prevent abuse before they start dating. It’s a conversation that needs to start earlier, she says: “There were upperclassmen who didn’t understand that you can’t have consent if you’re drunk. Even educating a couple of people…on a small scale is going to help when they go to college.”
A two-year participant in the Virginia Model General Assembly, Tornquist brought similarly frank (and pragmatic) discussions about sexuality to the debate floor. One session she introduced a bill calling for more comprehensive sex education in schools. This year she was elected House Speaker and oversaw deliberations on a bill that would have legalized and regulated prostitution.“I think Arlington is a bit of a bubble ideologically, and it’s a cool experience to meet people who have different views than I do,” she says. “Even if you bring a lot of facts and have good debate skills, it’s hard to get people to change their minds.”
Last summer Tornquist interned for Democratic Congressman Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania, helping to organize emails from constituents and write a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue about nutrition assistance benefits for low-income families. Her senior project is another internship—this time in the office of Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney Theo Stamos.
A National Merit Commended Scholar who scored a perfect 36 on her ACT, Tornquist will enroll at Dartmouth College this fall.