While most college students use loans to pay for tuition and fees, senior student-athlete Blair Henderson used a $5,000 loan to invest in his mother’s business.
Henderson, a 22-year-old mid-distance runner and personal trainer, does more than run track. Henderson contributes to his mother’s Cajun-Creole restaurant, Mardi Gras Memphis, which is located in Memphis, Tennessee.
Outside of early morning and afternoon track practices, tutoring sessions, résumé building and meetings, Henderson created his mother’s restaurant website and applications and continues to respond to restaurant emails, handle marketing and promotions and determine who is hired.
“We [Henderson and his brothers] always were kind of like [entrepreneurial] — even when we were younger. If we needed money, we’re getting it,” Henderson said. “We’d go to the dollar store, buy candy and then sell it. We had to make money all the time. It was never like, ‘You’re just going to get it.’ So that’s kind of one of the reasons I got pushed to getting the scholarship for track.”
Henderson started running track his sophomore year in high school at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, Louisiana. By his senior year, he was ranked the eighth fastest 800-meter runner in the nation at a high school level.
At the University, Henderson runs indoor track, outdoor track and cross country. He competes in the 800-meter dash and the mile run.
In addition to track and helping run his mother’s business, Henderson has a passion for personal training. He designed a running program to teach people who aren’t physically active how to run properly, monitor their heart rate and get the most out of their run.
By the end of their seven-week program, his students will run in the Alzheimer’s 5k.
Henderson discovered he had an unknown heart condition after fainting during a track meet in high school. After many tests and traveling, doctors couldn’t diagnose his heart problem. Because he wanted to continue running track, his doctors implanted a loop recorder in his chest to monitor his heart rate at all times. It was removed in January 2015.
Since then, Henderson has trained patients with a variety of conditions, such as exercise-induced asthma.
“I want to work with patients with cardiac rehabilitation, so if a patient has a heart attack or stroke, I can prescribe exercise that will help them get back to normal and improve from there,” Henderson said.
Henderson’s passion for helping average and challenged clients is the drive behind his tight schedule and developed résumé.
After graduation, he hopes to immediately work directly with clients and complete his book on his life and personal development.

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