Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 10 No. 5 | May 2018

inside.hokiesports.com 37 The world, from your doorstep —with eight non-stop destinations and more than four hundred only a connection away. Begin your journey from the convenience of Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport. To learn more, visit FLYROA.COM. F L Y F R O M H O M E . “I’m excited for her. I feel there’s still a lot of successful racing ahead of her.” Barring injury, she figures to be just as dominant next season as a senior, perhaps even more so. Not that she thinks that far ahead, but she remains aware that she possibly faces difficult choices—to pursue a professional track career, or to jump into a potentially lucrative job as a civil engineer. Pocratsky is on track—no pun intended—to become one of the rare students to graduate in four years with a degree in engineering, even after changing her major from mechanical engineering to civil. Her internship with Grunley Construction in Washington, D.C., this summer hopefully will give her insight on her future fate. “I’m interested to see how that will be,” she said. “I think it will be good. I actually will be up and around, walking around the job site, inspecting to see if everything is moving well and also looking at papers and signing off on them. It’s just a lot more hands-on, and you can see your work coming into play more than what I was getting out of mechanical [engineering].” Engineers like to joke that scientists dream about doing great things, but engineers actually do them. In some respects, that rings true. Pocratsky certainly has done great things so far—both on the track and in the classroom. And for sure, more is in store. Rachel Pocratsky is coming into her own during her junior season, earning All-America honors for the first time in her career at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.