JOURNAL METRO FEMALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR: Rebecca Neal, Highland

There are sports stats, and then there are life stats.

And sometimes, they splice together and essentially become the same thing.

Consider Rebecca Neal of Highland, a junior who today is being recognized as the Albuquerque Journal’s Metro Female Athlete of the Year for 2024-25.

Neal, 17, is a four-sport athlete for the Hornets, and skilled at them all.

She was an all-district soccer midfielder in the fall. She was also all-district in basketball, a sport where she can be asked to play any of the five positions on the floor.

She is a state champion powerlifter; in fact, her April victory at the Rio Rancho Events Center in the 148-pound division of the Class 4A meet was her second state title in this new sport in as many years.

And last month, she became a two-time state champion in the high jump at the state track and field meet. She scored points in multiple events.

Neal has also played volleyball at Highland. She is a former swimmer. She is highly accomplished in karate outside of her regular prep schedule. The school’s cross country coach has been after Neal to join them.

There’s not much she hasn’t done, or can’t do.

“She’s only had four days off since the summer before her freshman year,” her mother, Ann Paulls-Neal, said.

Great quote, and darn near accurate, her father Lonnie Neal said with a hearty laugh, but not entirely correct.

“We did take a family trip to Hawaii,” he said. But you get the gist.

And here is where sports and life intersect. Neal, relentless and apparently tireless, does what is so challenging: She segues from one sport to another, from one specific discipline to another, no two of them even remotely alike and yet all of them oddly connective.

While so many athletes narrow their focus to a single sport, Neal is 180 degrees from that and chooses to juggle, which she does extremely well.

“They all help each other,” she said. “Track, I’m getting faster and more explosive, and that always helps in basketball, which helps in soccer, and soccer is conditioning for all my other sports.”

Powerlifting, she concedes, is just “pure strength.”

Multitasking, her father observed, is not merely an acquired skill set, it is a complex matrix his daughter manages better than most, even as Rebecca says sustaining her level in each sport “is challenging. It’s having to put down one thing, pick up the next. … (But) I can’t imagine being able to narrow it down to one sport. Constantly working at one thing, it would be hard to find the joy in it.”

To that end, her father said, she’s intent on finding a throughline.

“I think the biggest thing is her willingness to be the best at everything she tries,” Lonnie Neal said. “She grew up in a very competitive household. We want to win.”

Rebecca Neal is one of the very few New Mexico prep athletes who plays varsity athletics, and who plays for both her parents as head coaches. Lonnie is Highland’s girls basketball coach, Ann the Hornets’ girls track and field coach.

She is, both her parents say, hugely competitive. Contrastingly, Neal is noticeably soft spoken.

“And, on top of that, even as soft spoken as she is, she’s a pleaser,” Lonnie Neal said.

Ann Paulls-Neal picks up the story from here.

“(She likes) being a good teammate. Her best times have come off relays. She’s faster with a baton in her hands because she’s trying to help her teammates. … She makes such a difference on the teams she’s on, and that’s what I’ve always enjoyed as a parent.”

Not that Rebecca can’t be internally triggered to elevate.

Her mother recalled speaking to Rebecca at a track meet two years ago, her freshman season, and advising her daughter that maybe she ought to consider running the 400, since she didn’t have sprint speed.

“And,” Ann added, “I think she took that as a personal challenge, because now she definitely has sprint speed.”

Lonnie Neal tacks on to this narrative some more, particularly as it relates to karate, where Neal is a black belt. (She even skipped out on the second day of the delayed metro track and field championships to compete in a state championship karate tournament).

“You should see her,” Lonnie Neal said. “She’s vicious. I feel sorry for those kids. It’s not malicious, but that’s Rebecca. She knows what to do, when to do it.”

But basketball is her first love, and it’s a sport both her parents played collegiately — Lonnie at Panhandle State in Oklahoma, while Ann once made the University of New Mexico roster as a walk-on.

“When she turns it on, she has no peers. She just doesn’t turn it on a lot,” her father said. Her winter days were long, lifting in the morning, and playing basketball into the evening.

But Neal has proven she can pivot from one sport to another with relative ease, even if her calendar is full.

“If we specialize in any of those (sports), she’s one of the best people in that discipline in the Southwest,” Lonnie Neal said. “And I think that’s what makes her who she is. She can turn the switch really quick.”

Paulls-Neal marveled at how Rebecca balances everything on her plate.

“So far, it seems like it’s working for her,” she said. “She’s one of those kids, I watch her come back to something and she’s just as good as when she left, and sometimes better.”

Neal this weekend competed at the Great Southwest Track and Field Classic, in the heptathlon.

Soon as the meet ends, she heads into the summer, with basketball at the forefront in June, then soccer in July, and the start of her senior season in August. And also a reflection on this AOY honor.

“When I first heard, I was kind of shocked in a way,” she said, “knowing my hard work paid off this whole season, this whole year. Like, I did it.”

About Rebecca Neal

School: Highland

Age: 17 (Class of 2026)

Born: Albuquerque

GPA: 4.38

Sports: Soccer, basketball, powerlifting, track and field

Parents: Ann and Lonnie

Sibling: Maya, 13

Is anyone here a marine biologist? Neal hopes to someday answer that question in the affirmative, as she plans to study marine biology in college. Let’s hope she doesn’t encounter any angry seas.

When she’s not competing: Neal says she likes to draw. She was in a ceramics class at Highland, and said her favorite thing to draw is butterflies.

Karate endeavors: Neal is a black belt in karate. “A solid black belt,” she said. At the state championships earlier this year, she took a first place in her age group in sparring, and a second in kata, which is, Neal said, like memorizing, “like a fake fight. Like a choreographed performance.” Neal has been involved in karate for 12 years.

Jaden Meadows cameo: We mentioned the interesting tie-in between this year’s Male Metro Athlete of the Year, La Cueva’s Mason Posa, and Sandia High wrestler Jaden Meadows. Now it’s time to match Meadows with Neal. They are second cousins.

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