The Fort Worth Country Day cross country team had their Flyin’ Hawks meet at Tarrant County College on October 10, 2015. The team had to meet up at FWCD at 6:00 a.m. and were surprised to see Jack Carvalho ’17 already on the bus ready to leave. Jack is playing boys volleyball this fall, but he still wanted to come to a cross country meet to cheer on his fellow high school students.

Carvalho is also the falcon mascot for home football games. “The Falcon” cheers on his teams and shows his school spirit every time he puts on the suit. Carvalho is very involved with the FWCD announcements as well, often making sports announcements to gain support for the teams and make everyone laugh. Everyone in the high school, including the teachers, know the name “Jack Carvalho” because of his unique and inspiring personality.

No sport is left out by Carvalho and he proved this by waking up early with the cross country team. Carvalho showed up to the meet with the following: one red and one blue bottle of paint to put all over his face, front-side and back, to represent the FWCD school colors; six extremely raucous airhorns; a no-sleeve t-shirt; and his own school pride. Carvalho ran the 15-minute warmup with the boys varsity team and ran all over the course during the races so that he could see the FWCD runners as many times as possible to encourage them to run well and show his support. He also helped set up the FWCD tent. His reward for this was a 20-foot tall FWCD flag to wave around during the meet.

The cross country team and boys volleyball team are the only two sports which will be represented at the Fall SPC championships in Austin this weekend, and the cross country team will return the favor to Carvalho by going to watch one of the varsity boys volleyball matches to cheer them on Friday afternoon. Hopefully Carvalho and the rest of the FWCD varsity boys volleyball team will know how much they are appreciated and understand what it feels like to be supported by the student body.