Going the Extra Mile
Sarah Spini proves that kindness and determination are muscles worth exercising
Editor’s Note: Sarah Spini is the winner of YVW’s Empowered Women Scholarship. The scholarship honors a student who shines scholastically, has character, leadership, and community spirit. Sarah is all of the above. She received a $1,000 scholarship to start her freshman year at Montana State University this fall.
“Kindness is not hard.”
That statement is something 18-year-old Sarah Spini has known since she first handcrafted a kindness pledge in the back of her reading workbook, scrawled out with a bright red crayon.
“First grade, that’s kind of when the bullying started with a few kids,” Sarah says. Instead of getting angry, the then-pint-sized girl remembers telling herself, “Why not just make everyone sign something and pledge to be kind to one another,” she says. “I wrote it all out and got as many people as I could to sign it.”
While the pledge didn’t last long, Sarah says, “It was my little way of trying to make a difference.” She still has that piece of paper tucked away in a drawer.
Half a dozen years later when a seventh-grade English assignment asked students to write about the subject, her essay proposed creating an anonymous reporting system for students who felt bullied. One of Sarah’s teachers told her, "Your solution is something we could do. We just have to figure it out.” Laurel Middle School eventually created an anonymous reporting link for bullying on its website.
"It's powerful," she says about using her voice. "It's a little scary too. Once you know you can make a difference, you have to use it responsibly."
Chasing finish lines
Making a difference isn't the only thing that keeps Sarah moving. She laughs and says, “I’m not someone who can sit still.”
When the Covid pandemic hit, it unexpectedly opened a door. School ended by noon, leaving long afternoons to explore Montana by bicycle.
Then came the 2021 Summer Olympics. As an avid swimmer, Sarah tuned in to watch Katie Ledecky dominate the swimming events. But it was one of the competitions that followed the coverage which caught her attention — the triathlon.
"I thought, 'Well ... I bike. I swim. I can run,'" she remembers with a laugh. "That doesn't seem that hard."
She signed up for the Big Sky State Games, swimming the waters at Lake Elmo at just 14 years old and riding her mom’s mountain bike through her first sprint triathlon. After it was over, she immediately wanted another.
“It’s really cool to cross that finish line,” she says of the accomplishment.
Today, she competes across Montana and Wyoming — from Powell and Cody to Bozeman and Helena — with a personal best of just over an hour in the sprint distance, which includes an 800-yard swim, a 12-mile bike ride and a 5K run.
When she heads to Montana State University, she hopes to join the University’s triathlon club.
A family that believed she could
Sarah’s drive didn't appear out of nowhere. She credits her parents with encouraging every one of her ambitious ideas. "I was a very big thinker from a young age," she says. "My parents always told me, 'Yes, you can absolutely do this. We'll help you.'"
Her father is one of her biggest role models. As a retired fire marshal, Sarah remembers watching him make difficult decisions that weren't always popular but were always grounded in integrity.
"My dad was committed to doing what was right," she says. "I thought, if my dad can do it, I can too."
These days, he's still beside her — often on early morning bike rides.
"He pushes me," she says. "It made me more willing to try new things. Yes, they're hard. Yes, they might not go the way I planned. But I have to at least try."
That willingness has shaped countless acts of service. During Covid, she and her sister spent Tuesday mornings making sandwiches through their church before biking downtown to hand them out to families in need.
"It gave me a lot more grace for my classmates," she says. "Some of the kids I saw there were people I knew from school." She pauses before saying, "It takes a lot of courage to ask for help."
At 17, she ran for her church council, alongside her father. When she discovered the church's automated external defibrillator (AED) hadn't been maintained, “I sat there and thought, do people know how to use this? It kind of defeats the purpose to have one if someone has a heart attack and no one knows how to use it,” Sarah remembers.
So, she borrowed CPR training mannequins from one of her teachers at Billings Central Catholic High School and after church one day, gave a demonstration. With help from her mother, a registered nurse, she taught fellow congregants lifesaving CPR skills and made sure the batteries are changed to keep the AED at the ready.
A calling strengthened by experience
This fall, she'll begin nursing classes at Montana State University with plans to become a nurse practitioner — and eventually earn her doctorate. Her own health scare only reinforced that calling.
In 2024, while training for triathlons, she noticed what she thought might simply be stronger abdominal muscles. When that didn’t make sense, a doctor said it might be “wheat belly.”
“I could see it,” Sarah says. “I would lay on the ground, and I could see the bump.”
An ultrasound revealed a cyst the size of a soccer ball that doctors later surgically removed. Sarah doesn’t blame her doctors. “It’s hard because you want to believe the best in everyone,” she says. But the experience expanded her vision to include a future in women’s health.
“Maybe I could make an impact,” she says.
Going farther
Throughout her life, Sarah has clung to a philosophy which underscores going the extra mile in all things.
“Sometimes that extra mile makes all the difference. You don’t know what kind of positive impact it is going to have on your life or the people around you.”
Sarah makes her point by describing a hike up a challenging mountain with a beautiful view waiting at the top.
"You can tell yourself you're tired, or that the rain is coming, and turn back before the summit. But then you miss something really special."
It's a lesson she's lived since she picked up that red crayon in first grade.
