HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — This week as we celebrate High School Scholars, we bring you the story of a Hernando County student who is on the ball.

Nathan Herrington and his AP physics teacher are testing out kinetic energy.   

“You shoot the ball into here,” he said while demonstrating. “The pendulum goes up a certain height, you measure the change in height, therefore you measure the change in gravitational potential energy, and you can figure out the kinetic energy of the ball.” 

Jack McDonald nominated Herrington as a Spectrum News High School Scholar. He has taught him in AP physics and AP calculus and says Herrington stands out among the best and brightest.

“His work ethic,” McDonald said. “He will work at the homework relentlessly until he figures out the answer. He’ll come and ask me whenever he has free time and he knows I have free time, so him going above and beyond to make sure he understands the material is something we as teachers notice.”

While McDonald will gladly brag on Herrington, the student is actually very humble. 

“AP government, AP microeconomics, AP physics, AP calculus, and AP literature and composition,” he said in describing his course rundown.

Just this year he got his first B on a report card.

“It hurt, it hurt, but then AP government happened,” he said.

Instead of being discouraged about it, Herrington uses it as motivation. Even when school is over, he’s hard at work at home.

He plans on following in his older brother’s footsteps and attending the University of Kentucky, where he wants to pursue video game development.

“I started playing with my brother on Nintendo Wii and we would play Mario Kart and I just kind of like went from there,” he said.

Whether he’s working on the concepts of physics, or playing a game, the wins will likely keep coming for this Spectrum News High School Scholar.