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Kadena student on road to become future AF leader

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Brooke P. Beers
  • 18th Wing Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  Michael Potts is a 17 year old senior at Kadena High School on Okinawa. He has a grade point average over a 4.0, attends multiple advanced placement classes and, despite all the clubs he's a part of, he's had time to play on the school tennis team the past three years.

"I spend most nights up until 12 or one o'clock in the morning doing homework," he said. "I may have over-extended myself, but I know it will pay off."

Over the summer, Potts applied to seven colleges, but one stands out more than all the others with its core values of integrity first, service before self and excellence in all they do.

The United States Air Force Academy will be accepting 30 percent less students and the graduating class of 2016 will be its smallest in recent history, with less than 1,000 students.

"I had been really getting depressed and disappointed about it. I applied and then recieved a notification saying it was the smallest class in history, and I thought I wasn't good enough. I'm just a small, little guy."

All those nights of little sleep paid off Feb. 13, when Potts checked his online application page and he received the notification telling him he made the cut. He worked really hard even though sometimes things might not always turn out exactly the way he'd like, knowing there was a chance he might not get in, but this time, Potts got all the credit he deserved.

"The chances of getting in the academy are so slim; the odds are so great that it's hard to have your expectations there," said his father, Stanley Potts, physical education teacher at Stearley Heights Elementary School and prior Army soldier. "I told him, 'Michael I would have never encouraged it if I hadn't had the confidence that you had the abilities to achieve this'. Now that it's happened, I'm just overwhelmed with so many feelings of joy and shock and awe, and the big thing is a person who has really worked for something gets the just rewards in the end."