Staff writer
When Lotti Benning returns to her home in Germany, she will be taking along newspaper clippings, medals, and other mementos she accumulated during her year as a junior exchange student at Centre.
“At first, I was hoping I could have gone to a bigger town,” she said, “but now I realize I could not have participated in as many things.”
She was active in sports, playing volleyball, basketball, and track, two of them for the first time.
At 6 foot 2, she was a good blocker at the net in volleyball and basketball. Running in track was a new experience. She was a member of a 4x800-meter relay team that broke two school records.
She participated in two state-level events, the 1A girls’ basketball tournament at Emporia, in which the team played three games and placed third, and the state track meet this past weekend.
“It was pretty cool,” she said. “There’s nothing like that in Germany.”
She will fly out of Wichita today, have a stopover in Houston, then fly to Frankfurt, taking along many memories.
“I’ll never forget the friends I made here,” she said.