Alex Maenchen
Features Reporter

When Cristian Miranda broke his ankle a couple Decembers ago, he refused to stay down for long.

“I hated the idea of just going around on crutches,” Miranda said of the time he was sidelined from cheerleading. “The moment they told me, ‘Okay, you can walk, but take it easy,’ every morning I would go to the Mav center and I would walk on the treadmill.”

Before doctors cleared him, however, Miranda had already been hitting the trails, hiking Mt. Garfield and Serpent’s Trail on crutches.

Though a CMU student and United States citizen, Miranda’s not from around here. At 21, he has already lived two lives and looking is to add a third.

Born in Vienna, Austria to traveling musicians, Miranda spent his youth moving across most of continental Europe. Following in his father’s footsteps, he picked up the cello at age four, which led him to the Music Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany when he was eight.

By 11, his proficiency with the cello granted him admission into the Juilliard Pre-College Division, bringing him stateside while separating him from his family.

After two years of study, Miranda moved to the Grand Valley where his mother was looking for a place to eventually retire. Performing as the principle cellist for the Colorado Youth Symphony Orchestra in Denver, he attended school in Palisade while in foster care.

“He had a good nurturing experience in foster care but it’s such a different place for someone like him to resonate from,” Athena Whaley, head cheerleading coach at CMU, said. She met Miranda when he first discovered cheerleading during his junior year of high school.

“The high school cheerleading team had an assembly and they posted posters all around, saying, ‘Would you like to come in and throw some of the girls around,’” Miranda said. “That was an important part of their advertising.”

He and some friends began attending practices and before long Miranda was excelling, competing at the state level and making it to nationals that following year.

“It’s just like music. You can never be perfect at it,” Miranda said. “It doesn’t matter how much you work at it and you may be one of the best in the world and you can never be good enough. It’s about perfecting the tiny details,”

Before Miranda graduated from the International Baccalaureate Program at Palisade High School, his father passed away.

“My dad was a very, very caring man,” he said. “He’s pretty much the one who taught me everything I know when it comes to music, when it comes to most of my life in general.”

Whaley, who continues to coach Miranda in his senior year at CMU, remarked on his courage and drive.

“For him to continue on such a positive path while having such a big void in his life—it always amazed me that he was driven to get his citizenship all by himself,” she said.

Despite his hardships, Miranda has never put limitations on himself, balancing a full plate throughout his college career as a double major in music and biology with a medical focus.

His goal is to go to medical school and become a neurosurgeon while eventually achieving a doctorate in composition for viola performance. Despite such high ambitions, Miranda has remained humble.

“I tend to keep a lot of things to myself rather than just let them out. I try not to let it distract me because it’s kind of my strength. I try to keep things to myself and if it doesn’t bother anyone, it’s fine,” Miranda said. “But at the same time, it becomes my weakness because you can only keep so many things bottled up.”

Not one for crutches, Miranda is a tough guy to catch in a vulnerable moment. Even so, his dedication toward his education and craft inspires further encouragement to continually exceed his bounds from those close to him.

“He leaned on those of us that he had around him, but just for moral support. He had a vision of what he was going to do and what he was going to be.” Whaley said. “It’s amazing that he is what he, is given what he’s gone through.”

amaenche@mavs.coloradomesa.edu