Emma Brooke Levering is used to moving. In fact, a large portion on her life is spent in motion.
A highly decorated runner at Homewood High School, Emma Brooke began running as a young girl when she joined her dad on his daily three- and four-mile runs throughout the city of Homewood.
“I would start running with him on the weekends when I was really young,” Emma Brooke says. “And whenever I got to the point where I could do three miles without walking and stopping, my mom would sign us up for little 5Ks in Birmingham and Homewood.”

Those runs would eventually serve as foundational moments and milestones in the life of a budding runner, one who has had noteworthy success throughout her high school career.
Now the little girl who used to run with her dad is a two-time 6A cross-country individual state champion (2023, 2024), a two-time Gatorade Player of the Year, a 1600m Outdoor State Champion, and an Indoor & Outdoor Track 3200m State Champion.
Amazingly, Emma Brooke set a personal record in the 5K in 2023 in the state meet with a time of 17:46, and then ran the exact same time the next season, capturing the state title on both occasions.

Coached by Kelly McNair (cross-country) and Logan Cornutt (track and field), Emma Brooke says the Patriot coaches and players all display a winning attitude in their approach to the program’s success. “I love my team,” Emma Brooke says. “Everyone is kind and hardworking and it is exciting to know that those around you care as much as you do about the success of the team. All of my best friends have come from the distance team.”
A lover of travel, Emma Brooke always knew she wanted to go away for college, she just didn’t know where. As her running career began to blossom, she began to put out feelers to different programs around the country and reached out to a Big Ten school approximately 836 miles away from Birmingham.
Soon, the “where” came into focus: Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania.
But why Penn State? First, Emma Brooke liked the fact that it was different. Homewood graduates have had remarkable success across the years, but few have chosen Penn State as their institution of higher education. The thought of experiencing a new place and new culture was also intriguing to her, but in the end, it was the people and the environment that made all the difference.
“I just really love the coaches and the team there,” Emma Brooke says. “And I saw it as a place where I could be happy, both running and not running. So that was really important to me because sometime throughout my college career, I’m probably going to be hurt and not running, and it’s really important that I am also excited about being somewhere, even when I’m not doing what I love.”

Indeed, running is a cathartic activity for Emma Brooke; it’s something she uses both to clear her head and to relieve stress. But it also serves as a constant in her life, a source of comfort—“I think it’s really nice to have something like that, where you don’t have to think, you can just go and do it,” she says.
Forasmuch success as she’s had in cross-country and track, Emma Brooke excels in the classroom at Homewood as well, carrying a 3.98 unweighted GPA and a 4.2889 weighted GPA. She is involved in Beta Club, Dream Team, and Marine Science Club, and plans on majoring in biomedical engineering at PSU after she graduates in May.
“I have always wanted to work in the health field,” Emma Brooke says. “I really like the human body and I like helping people…biomedical engineering has great pathways and there are so many ways you can go from there.”
In her spare time, Emma Brooke says she enjoys baking, cooking, reading, and knitting. Her favorite weekend activity is going to the movies and her favorite restaurant is Bamboo on 2nd.

Next year, Emma Brooke will run cross-country and track at Penn State, and will likely compete in anything from 5Ks and 6Ks to the 3K steeplechase. Until then, she will continue training, enjoying her time as a student-athlete at Homewood, and making her parents, Mike and Dana Levering, very proud.
When thinking about Emma Brooke’s longing to move, a poignant quote by author James Altucher comes to mind: “Every day, you reinvent yourself. You’re always in motion. But you decide every day: forward or backward.”
Emma Brooke Levering has chosen to move forward. For her, the “where” may be Penn State, but it’s clear that in life, this student-athlete is set on going the distance. TG
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Photos by Al Blanton