Brandon Love, a third-year economics major and MBA candidate, is prospering in his career as a student-athlete. Love is a member of the track team and has made strides on the track and in the classroom. Love participates in the 200 meter and 400 meter races and has found success during his first three years at FAMU.
In addition to track, Love holds a 3.2 grade point average and is a member of Big Brother Little Brother Mentoring Program and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
Unlike most athletes hailing from South Florida, Love did not pick up the sport at a relatively young age. He enjoyed football and baseball as a child and had no interest in trying track.
It was not until the tenth grade that Love made the decision to try out for the track team.
“I was new to the sport and some people had been running for years, especially being from Miami where it is very competitive,” Love said. “Just to make the team I had to get fast quick.”
In Love’s first year there were challenges that ultimately made his passion for the sport grow. The will to win resonated deeply within Love and propelled him to take his training up a notch.
“When I first started I wasn’t the best — I was actually average,” Love said. “I found a sport I really started to enjoy so in the off-season I put in the highest level of work that I ever have.”
The improvement was huge. Love dropped multiple seconds off all the times in his events. He was instantly described as one of the premier athletes in the state.
As it relates to his collegiate career, Love was faced with another adjustment when he began running for the track team in the second semester of his freshman year.
“I was pretty much a fish out of water,” Love said. “I really was just trying to figure things out on my own and I had to realize that I had to be more focused.”
Love says that the experience was difficult but showed him that in college nobody will “take it easy on you,” as he describes it.
“All of the freshmen had a semester of running, I had to just jump into it,” Love said.
Teammate Markiel Ross admires Love’s work ethic.
“He’s known for being dedicated and lifting our spirits no matter the moment,” Ross said. “He has always been the person to be willing to do anything to help the team.”
Love has been able to record personal bests in all of his events including the 400 meter dash with a time of 49.59 seconds and the 200 meter dash with 22.03 seconds.
“Brandon is hard-working and consistent,” said fraternity brother Joshua Clements. “He is extremely humble and if he is lacking in something he will take the time to learn and improve upon it.”
The hard work only made Love better as he now hopes to win a medal in every race that he runs in, just as he hopes to one day be in the history books along with the rest of the elite athletes in the university’s history.
“The men’s team hasn’t been able to go to the MEAC championship in two years so it is definitely time to step up,” Love said. “I definitely want to place it as the mark that I leave on FAMU.”
Love says that all students should master the ability to manage time between all of their activities and says it is a key to his success.
“With anything that you do it is important to manage your time. Once you can do that you can really focus,” Love said. “When I first started running at FAMU I struggled. Over time I found it to become more simple once you become more organized and because of it I have been able to excel.”