Personal Statement
Personal Essay
Some people are born into high-level sports, some are raised to be excellent at it. For me, I just got tired of people telling me I should play basketball because I was so tall. Although I only really started to get invested in sports in the late years of high school, there was always part of me that brought me back to those adrenaline packed moments.
Probably the only sport that I might be a “natural” in is swimming. When I just turned two I was thrown into the pool and was already kicking my way towards the edge like any dog would do. But even though I’m even stronger and faster now and have a natural pair of huge flippers that I call my feet. The Universe somehow just didn’t want me to follow that lane, even though we were surrounded by water.
Or at least not yet, I have been living on an Island in the Pacific called Vanuatu with my family for about 12 years. No fifty meter pool and an aquatics federation that had problems with letting a white guy represent the country, although I probably had set the best times at the try-outs. During that time however the grind had begun.
Earlier the year before a good friend from school invited me to play basketball, the weather looked nice from where I was so after class we strolled up to the court. Everyone expected me to start windmill dunking between my legs and were disappointed when I didn’t, but since that day a basketball was all I ever got for my birthday. It’s been two years now and I have been on the court every day. Pretty much like every “big man” though, I didn’t like being restricted by the three second area. I always wanted to be an agile, athletic and flexible ball handler rather than a bulldozer and bully people on the court.
A full body workout and hours on the water made rowing my best option to get a little muscle and good stamina. I had rowed a few times when I was younger and that helped me with my technique as I got faster, but that’s how my rowing journey started.
One morning as I hopped in my boat and went off for my petty 1km row around a small island close to shore, a coach who had just finished training Rio approached me in his small motor boat and as he saw my height proposed to train me as well. Rio was the leading rowing champion in Vanuatu, they had just finished their routine training preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and I was about to be a part of it. As the days turned into months I got used to waking up at 6 am in the morning and I began setting new and faster records, beating the champion himself by more than 20 seconds. But hey it’s Vanuatu, you won’t even find it on a map.
Now I am in the national swimming squad, have qualified for the World Indoor Rowing Championships in Italy in 2022 with a 2000m time of 6:08 and I have won two Shefa League Championships, which is the biggest basketball competition in Vila in two different teams as well as an independence competition in the midst of 2021. Our team, Seveners, is now undoubtedly the best team in the country.
