Senior Dylan Sullivan lives two lives. On an imaginary scale from sports jock to computer nerd, he manages to fit into both extremes without anything in between. A state champion pole vaulter and avid video gamer, Sullivan is a quiet guy who succeeds at what some would say is the most exotic sport offered at Wayland High School.

Though he trains hard at pole vaulting, sometimes weight lifting as often as six days a week during the off-season, Sullivan tends to downplay his own athletic accomplishments. In fact, sometimes he seems to ignore them.

“I ended up clearing ten feet, six inches freshman year and got sixth place at States,” said Sullivan, “but I didn’t pick up the ribbon because I didn’t know I’d won anything.”

Sullivan has quietly become a pole vaulting DCL All-Star. Last year he jumped 12 feet, six inches, high enough to win every regular season track and field competition and sweep the field at the Division 3 statewide meet.

“I’m kind of hoping for this year to be the year I improve a significant amount,” he said. “Hopefully I could push it to somewhere over 13’9” and get rid of that school record that has been hanging around since, like, the seventies.”

However, this year might be Sullivan’s last on the track. During college, he says, he’ll be working.

“I’ll try not to leave [college] with like $200,000 of debt,” he said.

When he isn’t preparing to launch himself into the sky, Sullivan pours his time into his love of video games. Recently, he has even begun programming some games of his own.

“He’s one of those kids [for] whom computer science comes to naturally,” said senior Mat Lau, a close friend and AP computer science classmate of Sullivan’s. “He’s really, really into it; he’s writing a program for his senior project.”

Senior projects like his are expected to take around ten hours a week.

“I’m probably working a bit more than that,” said Sullivan. “I worked ten hours last Sunday.“

Sullivan often mixes his programming with a healthy dose of pranks. As he double clicked on his computer game editing program, he pointed to another icon on his desktop.

“There’s my cheat engine,” he said. “It’s for annoying people on Facebook games. I was like, how can I cheat my score on these Facebook games so that when people who actually like these games go to see their score, my score can be ten points above theirs?”

When asked, Sullivan’s friends describe a host of similar practical jokes.

“He’s a professional troll,” said Mat Lau, referring to the slang term for an online practical joker. “But, he makes people laugh, so it’s worth it.”

Sullivan hasn’t decided where to go to college or what to study yet.

“I haven’t heard a lot of good feedback on the whole computer science field,” he said. “It seems like something that could be easily outsourced. I don’t want to get moved to India.”

When asked for three words that describe Sullivan, his friends try to summarize his intelligence and sense of humor.

“Amazingly brilliant troll,” said senior Mike Ren.

“No, but then you miss his quirkiness,” said fellow senior Sebastian Upjohn.

“Ok then,” said Ren. “Brilliantly deranged troll.”