Yale-bound Avani Hocker Singh is the KC Star’s Girls Scholar-Athlete of the Year

Avani Hocker Singh sat in the grass holding her knee and grimacing in pain.

Moments earlier, she’d slipped trying to jump over a hurdle — a task she’d done thousands of times before — and landed on a slab of concrete, twisting her knee in the process.

“I was just sitting there with my knee tucked, and something felt wrong,” she said. “My coaches and my teammates were just staring at me like, ‘Are you going to get up or what?’

“I tried to stand up, and my knee completely gave out.”

The athletic trainers at Olathe North High School initially thought Hocker Singh had strained a tendon. An MRI soon revealed that she had torn her ACL.

She was devastated.

For the first time, the track was taken from her. The number-one ranked junior hurdler in Kansas faced the biggest obstacle of her life.

Of course, she overcame it — what else would one expect from The Kansas City Star’s Girls High School Scholar-Athlete of the Year for 2026?

Pressure builds diamonds

Before she became one of the nation’s premier hurdlers, Hocker Singh seemed determined to try every sport imaginable.

Swimming. Diving. Soccer. Softball. Gymnastics.

You name it, she’s done it.

If there was a field, court or pool around, chances are she had spent time in it.

In fact, her first love was dancing. She said it’s both an escape and a way to become more in tune with her body.

Then came the moment that turned heads.

At an eighth-grade meet at California Trail Middle School, before she’d fully committed to the sport, she dominated the 400 and helped her team finish first in the 4x100 relay, relying largely on natural athleticism and raw talent.

Her mother, Dr. Meena Singh, cheered her on from the stands and realized it could be the start of something special.

“She had never really tried hurdles, but she performed really well,” Singh said. “So I was like, ‘Maybe you want actually to go out and try it.’ But she was still really focused on dance.

“But when I saw that she had the mindset to really push and train, that’s when I noticed that she could be special.”

Natural talent runs in the family. Singh played softball at USC before earning her doctorate at Harvard. Hocker Singh’s father, Thomas Hocker, was a track star at Yale before he, too, earned his doctorate from Harvard.

The cherry on top?

Hocker Singh’s sister, Anjali Hocker Singh — two years her senior — was a phenomenal distance runner at Olathe North, finishing her career with four Class 6A state championships. The Kansas Cross Country Runner of the Year for 2022 now runs for the Michigan Wolverines.

Excellence was the standard and there was some pressure to live up to the family name.

“I definitely had pressure from my parents to get into some type of competitive area where I could succeed and also challenge myself,” Hocker Singh said. “Because my sister was such a successful athlete, they wanted me to rise to her level of success, so they definitely put some pressure on me to do track.”

The parents said the pressure wasn’t about getting their children to follow in their footsteps, but rather to see them be dedicated, passionate and ultimately successful in whatever they decided to do.

“If she wanted to be a rapper or something, I’d be like, OK, let’s make it happen,” her father said. “Like, you’re going to get studio time, or practicing writing stuff in your notebook all the time.”

That was the family’s mentality, and it could sometimes be daunting. She remembers going on vacation and being awakened early to work out with her mom and sister, even when she was exhausted.

“If I’m training on vacation, and I’m working out super hard — and I’m not even a competitive athlete,” Mom said, “there’s no reason they shouldn’t be.”

That prompted a laugh from daughter Avani.

“Sometimes it would be annoying,” she said with a smile. “I think it was really good, obviously, for training and to make me mentally stronger. It was also motivational. Once I was more in charge of my own workouts, I was like, ‘Well, if I don’t do it, my mom will know and shake her head, from wherever she was.’”

Hocker Singh’s father set up a system of rewarding his children whenever their hard work led to accomplishments. When they wanted something new — say, a phone or car — they had to pick something and become a champion at it first.

“We all work for what we get,” Hocker said. “If she and her sister can go through high school and learn how to become a champ at something, that’s a skill that translates to the rest of life.

“So that’s one way that maybe I did pressure a little bit.”

Grammy Award-winning rapper “Lil’ Hocker Singh” didn’t come to fruition, but the parents‘ ever-present motivation made self-starters of both sisters. In Avani’s case, she consistently chases greatness and catches it, both on and off the track.

Hocker Singh graduated with a 4.612 grade-point average, ranking 22nd in her class, and managed a demanding athletic schedule while staying involved at her school and in the community.

At Olathe North, Hocker Singh was a Black student union executive, founder and vice-president of the diversity council and head of the South Asian Student Association. This year she also led an ICE protest.

If she wasn’t running track, she might be running for office — and she isn’t ruling that out for the future.

“She’s very independent-minded and very much a fighter,” her father said. “She’s small but very feisty. She’s an independent thinker who will fight for whatever she wants.”

So when a torn ACL threatened to derail everything she had worked for, Hocker Singh approached rehabilitation the same way she approached every other obstacle she encountered.

She fought.

‘A godsend’

Shortly before her injury, everything seemed to be falling into place.

As a junior — the most important year in the college recruiting process — Hocker Singh had already cemented herself as one of the nation’s premier hurdlers.

Just weeks before tearing her ACL, she broke Olathe North’s school record in the 300 hurdles with a time of 43.87 seconds. That mark ranks ninth in Kansas history.

College coaches from across the country had begun reaching out. Recruiting conversations became more frequent, and Hocker Singh was in regular contact with multiple programs as she explored her options at the next level.

Then, almost overnight, that momentum stalled.

The calls slowed. The emails, too.

Coaches who had once expressed interest shifted their attention elsewhere. As she traded hurdle drills for physical-therapy sessions, the recruiting buzz she had spent years building began to fade.

“I had to email a lot of coaches over the summer to try and reach out to them,” Hocker Singh recalled. “I didn’t get that many replies back. That was super difficult to deal with, but my mom and dad told me to keep pushing and believing in myself. They told me during my track season I could prove myself to them and have my revenge if they didn’t believe in me.”

Rather than dwelling on the coaches who stopped calling, she threw herself into the one thing she could control: her recovery.

Every physical-therapy appointment, every strength exercise and every milestone achieved became another step toward getting back on the track.

According to Olathe North assistant sprints coach Enika Mpwo, Hocker Singh approached the rehab process with the same intensity she brought to competition.

“She’s built different; her whole family is,” Mpwo said.

As soon as she received approval from her doctor, Hocker Singh contacted Mpwo and assistant hurdles coach Aaron Hannon, who has worked with her since seventh grade.

“She called both of us and said, ‘Hey, I’m ready to go,’” Mpwo said. “So I’m sitting there like, ‘You sure? Are you following the doctor’s orders?’”

Hocker Singh reassured him that she was.

“Then she just went to work, and the rest was history.”

“The rest” came quickly.

In late November, an unexpected opportunity arose when Yale reached out after losing a recruit. Coaches at the Ivy League school asked whether Singh would be interested in joining the program.

For an athlete whose recruiting prospects had evaporated, that call felt like a lifeline.

“I actually was there when she got the initial recruiting call from Yale over Thanksgiving, and that was really a godsend,” her father said. “I was happy that she had an opportunity to continue and run somewhere in college, because I know that was one of her personal desires.”

After visiting campus, meeting the coach and getting a taste of the Bulldogs’ culture, Hocker Singh didn’t need much time to make a decision. Just a few days later, she committed to Yale.

With the weight of the recruitment process off her shoulders, Hocker Singh focused on avenging her lost season.

“I made a vow to myself that I would come back with a vengeance my senior year,” she said.

If you’re following the trend here, you know what happened next.

Hocker Singh won every race she entered, except one, during the regular season, and saved her best performance for the biggest stage. At the Kansas Class 6A state championships, she blazed to a winning time of 43.05 seconds in the 300 hurdles, capturing the state title that had fueled her rehab from the moment she got hurt.

“When I run, I tell myself you got this,” Singh said. “You’re confident. This is your race.

“This upcoming track season I will be thinking about all offers that were rescinded and all the interest that was taken away from me. I’m definitely going to be trying to prove to the other teams (that didn’t want her) that it was a mistake.“

For Hocker Singh, the Kansas state title wasn’t the finish line, just another milestone in her journey. In her next chapter, she hopes to set school records, win Ivy League championships and compete on the national stage.

Any pressure she might feel from going to her father’s alma mater? She’s learned to embrace it. Live within it. Wear it as an outfit.

Singh has created her own internal pressure — a healthy type — and that’s created her loftiest goal yet.

“He had such an amazing career at Yale,” she said. “I would love to top that.”