BEEBE -- There wasn't much of a need for anyone to try and get Adrian Carranco up and going in any sport during his last year of high school.
He didn't have to be coaxed by his teammates and no inspiration tactics were needed from his coaches. Self-motivation is his go-to and his motives for participating in everything he did were simple.
"To compete and give it the best that I have to put the team in a position to win," said the recent Beebe graduate. "I want to succeed in what I do. I do a bunch of different events, a bunch of different sports, but if you're not competitive, you're really wasting your time. And I'm extremely competitive.
"So the head of it all is to compete to win, to play to win, to have a purpose."
The basis for everything Carranco did during as a senior at Beebe was for the betterment of the Badgers, and it showed.
The three-sport standout, who's the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps Male Athlete of the Year, made an invariable impact in football, basketball and track and field, all of which yielded positive results at the highest of levels for Beebe.
After playing big roles on both the football and basketball teams, Carranco delivered majorly in track and field. He helped the Badgers win the Class 5A state indoor title in February and nab a fourth-place finish in the outdoor meet nearly three months later. But he saved his best for last when he won the state decathlon – a week after breaking the Meet of Champs record in the triple jump.
"When it's time for him to focus, he focuses," Beebe track and field Coach Mark Pinkerton said of Carranco. "When it's not time to focus, he's a fun kid to be around so he's really good at compartmentalizing. Young kids nowadays, sometimes they have a hard time doing that. They either want to play all the time or they're too serious all the time.
"But with Adrian, he locks in when he needs to, and he's a beast when he gets going."
Carranco's stout numbers helped the Badgers get going and eventually position themselves to earn a berth in the Class 5A state playoffs last fall before a nasty arm injury forced him to miss the final three games – two of contests resulted in losses that knocked the team out of contention. He still managed to catch 860 yards worth of passes with 12 touchdowns in just 7 contests.
But Carranco was forced to take a step back after dislocating his elbow the week after he hauled in a pair of touchdowns against Jacksonville in October.
"It was severely snapped," said Carranco, who still earned all-conference honors. "It was actually two days before a game, and it happened in practice. If I would've continued to play, I could've broke the school record for most receiving yards in a season, but sometimes things happen."
Carranco would recover from that injury and jump straight into basketball, where he played an integral part in the Badgers finishing 14-11 overall and 7-7 in a tough 5A-Central Conference. That was good enough to tie for third place, but tiebreakers kept Beebe from earning a state tournament spot, which meant the team's 49-22 win over Little Rock Hall on Feb. 25 was Carranco's last in a Badgers uniform.
Still, there was no time for him to reflect on what could've been because less than 24 hours later, he was in Fayetteville helping Beebe collect an indoor title. He won the triple jump with a leap of 44-6.5.
"When he's out there, he's confident," Pinkerton said. "He expects to win when he's out there because he works at everything he does. And it didn't matter that he played that last basketball game on that Friday, then turned around and went to state the next day.
"But that's where his focus is such a big asset."
Carranco piled up wins in several events throughout the outdoor season, including victories in the 400-meter run and the triple jump at the Class 5A state championships. He duplicated that at the Meet of Champs, with his winning jump ranking in the top 10 nationally, and he put a capper to the year with his runaway at the decathlon.
"I find it all fun," Carranco said of juggling different sports. "If you look at it as a job, it can become harder to do. But you've got to like what you're doing if you're going to be out there. If you don't like doing it, you're not going to put forth your best effort because you don't want to be there. And that goes back to wanting to compete and win."
He's planning on taking that same mindset with him to the University of Central Arkansas next season on the Bears' track and field team.
"I want to make a name for myself," Carranco explained. "I put in a lot of work, I want to be successful, I want to win. I left everything out there this year, and I'm going to continue to do that at UCA."