Mykala, a senior at Armijo High School is a great leadership role to many young, and even older girls on the team. She plays an important role in girls coming to Cross Country practice every day and many of her teammates name her as positive, inspiring, and uplifting. Dechant has very high hopes for the upcoming season. She’s looking forward to Woodbridge, which is a Cross Country invitational in Southern California. She says her most fond memories come from there.

When looking back on her years running, Dechant boasts, “I think one of my favorite moments was sweeping MELS as I was a sophomore, it was really exciting.” Dechant not only cares about her Varsity Girls’ but her team as a whole including some graduated members of her team and coaches.

When asked who she looks up to she enjoyed her graduated teammate, Kirah Overman, who was very inspiring and was a role model to her as a young and growing runner. Some other inspirations were former coach, Dave Monk, who gave her lots of insightful things to think about. “Even though he’s gone I still hear him in my head during a hard workout.” Dechant states. Even though her former coach is gone, another coach is one of the people she looks up to. New head coach, Matthew Pence, is an inspiration of hers. “He’s the first person from Armijo to go to state in Cross Country, which is really tough to achieve with all the competition.”

Dechant is very humble, but also a fantastic distance runner. She has been running since she was a freshman, and 4 years later the hard work has started paying off! Don’t just take my word for it, come to the next Armijo Cross Country meet and support your Armijo runners!