{"id":24408,"date":"2026-03-04T00:20:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/24408\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T00:20:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T00:20:06","slug":"pepsi-spotlight-new-berns-gray-sweatman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/24408\/","title":{"rendered":"Pepsi Spotlight: New Bern\u2019s Gray Sweatman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; After a childhood of chasing football and basketball, Gray Sweatman made one most important decisions of his life in his Junior year of high school by switching exclusively to long-distance running. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Going from a kid (like most) who didn\u2019t enjoy going for runs, he picked up track in middle school, and realized years later that was his calling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cYeah, honestly no, I did not like running when I was younger, obviously you have to run in sports, but I wasn\u2019t a big fan of it, I didn\u2019t love it like I do now,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Specializing in the 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter races, Gray has separated himself mentally at New Bern,<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cGray can tolerate pain, so that is part of his success, that two-mile race hurts,\u201d his coach Mark Robison said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">As a Senior, Sweatman now is also preparing for college, where he\u2019s committed to run at Mars Hill University next year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; After a childhood of chasing football and basketball, Gray Sweatman made one most&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9853,104,15420,15417,11353,13118,15419,107,15414,15418,936,15415,15416],"class_list":{"0":"post-24408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bern","8":"tag-athlete","9":"tag-bern","10":"tag-college","11":"tag-cross-county","12":"tag-gray","13":"tag-high-school","14":"tag-mars-hill","15":"tag-new-bern","16":"tag-pepsi","17":"tag-running","18":"tag-spotlight","19":"tag-sweatman","20":"tag-track"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116168046958177892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}