When I first met Ashton in elementary school, I didn’t know much about the guy since he attended St. Thomas for his first three years of school. I then became very close with Ashton Shawn Nills during the summer of our sophomore year. The two of us met through baseball and common interests. Now it’s our senior year and I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity of interviewing Ashton to learn a bit more about him.
Ashton Nills has two dogs named Higgins and Nova. His mom's name is Renee and his dad's is Shawn. 17-year-old Ashton is an only child. For almost all of those years, he has been in love with two things: hunting and fishing. If Ashton isn’t busy with baseball, golf, or his job at One-Stop, chances are he's out doing what he loves, “rippin lips or dustin' sky pandas.” Ashton loves hunting so much that if he could live anywhere in the world for a year, he’d choose Montana, and that’s only because he could buy any hunting license he wanted. For sure the first license Ashton would buy would be for a bull elk, since that shooting one has been on his bucket list since he was in elementary school.
Hunting has influenced Ashton in a very positive way. When Ashton attends college at a school yet to be decided, he wants to go to pursue his dream of getting a job outdoors and protecting and restoring wildlife areas. If for some reason that was to not work out, he’d love to become a real estate agent in California. Ashton says he’s very excited about this career path because he’d be “livin’ the life.”
Although Ashton’s biggest hobbies are hunting and fishing, he still enjoys relaxing at the end of the day with a good movie or Netflix show. Ashton’s go-to movie is Coach Carter. If he’s in need of a binge-watching Netflix series, he turns to Outer Banks, which he’s already seen four times. Ashton's favorite character comes from his second favorite TV series, One Tree Hill. The character of his choice would be Dan Scott, and this is because Ashton sees him as, “An all-around great guy.”
When it’s all said and done, Ashton hopes that in 10 years he will be living in a house of his own that is near family and near land to hunt and fish. He also hopes that by then he will have done something extraordinary, like go on a guided fly fishing trip in Canada to catch trout and salmon. Ashton loves to live by the famous quote of “YOLO,” which explains why his life has been filled with nothing but excitement and adventure. He hopes to keep living out the rest of his life this way and to never take anything for granted.