A yellow wristband on her left wrist reads “confident,” and a navy blue band on her right wrist reads “heart.”

Michigan women's track and field captain Bettie Wade wears the "heart" band because she gives it her all every time she competes, her whole heart is in the sport. And she stresses the need to be confident in order to perform her best, a lesson she has learned after years of competition.

For the senior, confidence and heart are just two of the key ingredients necessary to always compete at her best. But those she can find in herself. It took a few falls before she looked to God, but she hasn’t looked back since.

As a high school senior, she was the one of the top high jumpers in the state of Michigan but didn’t qualify for the state championships she had been slated to win. Wade was devastated.

She did, however, qualify for states in the long jump, an event she had learned just a month earlier. And later that year, she won the Nike outdoor championship in the event.

“It kind of made me be like ‘Wow, I can’t control everything in my life,’ ” Wade said. “So I picked myself up and was like, 'You know what, God has a plan for me.’ I never imagined God would give you something you never imagined or asked for.”

It was then that Wade re-evaluated the role faith could play in her life.

Growing up in a Baptist family, Wade went to church as a child, but the experience didn’t resonate with her.

It was not until she and twin brother Marcellus visited their sister Patrice, who was studying college ministry at Grand Valley State while Wade was still in high school, that they decided to give church another try.

“In high school, we always grew up in the church but we didn’t have a relationship with Christ,” Wade said. “But when my sister went to college and got involved and we went up to visit her, we were like, ‘Oh, church can be kind of cool.’ ”

Wade withdrew from the Baptist church and joined a nondenominational one in college.

Four years later, she wears a cross around her neck and relies on her faith in God more than ever.

“(Track) has made my faith stronger,” Wade said. “With my ups and downs and trials and struggles, it has helped me to lean on God more. I’m just on fire for God right now, where before it was just like I was lukewarm.

"But now I am hot just because all he has blessed me with in track and field and just in life.”