Jeffory Groth '23 Recruiting Profile

     I am a biracial scholar-athlete. My mother is from Haiti and my father was born and raised in New York. They met in Haiti, where my father served his first tour overseas as a Foreign Service Officer with the US State Department. I have lived, studied, and played soccer all over the world, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, and Rome, Italy. I speak English with my Dad, French with my Mom, Haitian Creole with my Mom's family, study advanced second-year Spanish as a freshman, and spoke fluent Italian as a first, second, and third-grader. Although I like and play other sports (swimming, tennis, rugby, baseball, basketball), my first love is soccer. My Haitian grandfather is a huge fan and I learned my love of the game from him. I started playing organized soccer in Italy with an Italian coach at my French lycee, then continued with community and travel soccer in Newport, RI, before moving to Portsmouth, NH, where I have played town, club, and middle school soccer before starting my high school soccer career at Saint John's Prep (SJP), a Catholic, all-boys Division One school in Danvers, MA, not far from Boston. At SJP I have already distinguished myself by making the highest honors listwhile taking Accelerated Algebra and Accelerated Second-Year Spanish and by playing starting striker on the Freshman Soccer team (no freshmen played on the JV team), which went 12-0-1 for the season. I want to continue those accomplishments in each of my remaining three years at SJP, then take that same successful approach to a college or university, maybe in a language or geography major, but I don't know for sure yet.  

     Living and studying in so many places, both here and overseas, has taught me a lot. I know how difficult but important it is to adjust to a new place, to new classmates, and to new teammates. After Rome, I adjusted to Newport by switching my language of instruction (from French to English), playing coed soccer in the fall, and being selected for the highest level boys spring travel team each year. Then my family moved to New Hampshire, where I joined the Portsmouth town team, a group of boys who had been playing together since second grade. I was placed on the "B" team until I scored 5 goals in the first game of the season and got promoted to starting striker on the "A" team, a position I never gave up. After losing an early season game to a neighboring town, we never lost another game in three years, winning the NHSL State Division 1 Championship three years in a row. I still play at the club level with many of those teammates and the experience taught me that the team is the most important thing but that one person can also make a difference. I think that my SJP team will be as successful and fun as my Portsmouth City team was. Even though it would have been easier to go to the local high school, I chose to apply to and attend SJP for the superior academic environment and the higher level of athletic competition. I know that I will face both academic and athletic challenges during the next seven years, wherever I go to college, but I am confident that I will be resilient and ready to meet those challenges with the help of my parents, my teachers, my coaches, and my classmates/teammates. One interesting fact about me is that I have attended 2-week soccer trainings with Paris Saint Germain outside Paris twice, during the summers of 2017 and 2019. The second time, I won the "Coupe de Coeur" award for the player with the most heart.