Photos by Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Kendra Potter is heading back to her small town after being named an outstanding graduate at Radford University.

Kendra Potter (right) laughs with Assistant Athletic Trainer Amy Davis at the Athletic Training office at the Patrick D. Cupp Memorial Stadium at Radford. Potter is taking a job as an athletic trainer at UVa-Wise.

RADFORD -- The stereotype is that small-town kids want to get away as far and as fast as they can. The only way they want to see the tiny burg they grew up in is in their rearview mirror.

Norton native Kendra Potter doesn't fit the stereotype.

"A lot of people don't know where it is," Potter said of her hometown.

The local newspaper is called the Coalfield Progress, if that gives you any idea. Norton is a far Southwest Virginia city of 3,769 -- maybe 3,770 by next week.

Potter, 23, is finishing her undergraduate work at Radford University one-tenth of a point short of straight A's. She was all set to start in the University of South Carolina's graduate program this fall until she heard that the University of Virginia's College at Wise is looking for an athletic trainer.

Now she might go straight to work instead of graduate school -- back to Norton.

"I was fortunate to grow up in a good community," Potter said. "I'm really close with my family and everyone in the community. I just feel like this is my opportunity to give back to the community.

"You know, they helped me along the way. So maybe now I can do something for them."

One of the things she'd like to do is help establish trainers in the high schools around Norton. She played basketball and ran cross country in high school, but she never had a trainer work with her until she went to Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., before transferring to Radford.

Being an athletic trainer requires certification. That requires passing an exam -- sort of like a bar exam for trainers. Nearly two-thirds of the people who take it need more than one try to pass. Potter didn't.

She's also a certified sign language interpreter. So is her older sister, Julia Ringley. Their parents are deaf.

"I wanted to get my certification for interpreting just for my parents, to give back to them, because they've done a lot for me," Potter said.

"Where we live, interpreters are very scarce," Potter said.

Potter's parents, Ken and Ida, are from Buchanan County, and they met while attending the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in Staunton. They both were sent there as young children.

"They don't really talk about how hard it was to be away, but my grandparents talk about how hard it was to send their child away," Potter said. "But they knew that in order for them to get the best education, that's where they needed to go."

Potter and her sister picked up sign language the way most kids learn to speak, by imitating their parents.

"For us, it was learning to speak that was the difficult part because we learned to sign first," Potter said.

To make sure they were around people who spoke, Potter's parents enrolled them in preschool, took them to story hours at the local library, and frequently took them to visit their grandparents.

"They always took time to read books to us or teach us other things that we needed to know," Potter said.

The sisters needed to know a lot of things early, such as how to deal with people on the telephone or how to order meals at a restaurant.

"You have to grow up fast," Potter said. "You mature quicker. I was kind of shy a lot, but in situations like that, you just have to get over it because I wanted to help my parents. I know there are some children of deaf people who don't help out. And I just think that's very wrong."

Though Potter may pass up graduate school at South Carolina, she's not passing up graduate school. She's found a couple of good programs she can pursue online.

"One of my goals is to be an athletic trainer in the WNBA [Women's National Basketball Association] or in a bigger college setting," she said. "Women's basketball is my favorite sport, so something that has a really good basketball program, like the [University of Tennessee] Lady Vols. Something like that is what I would like to do eventually."