Great article on Graham Ezzy
Read this interesting article on Graham Ezzy from the Daily Princetonian.
Source: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/04/02/20661/
Video: http://www.continentseven.com/windsurfmove1337.html
Graham Ezzy ’11 began professionally windsurfing at age 15.
Though he does not get to practice as much at Princeton,
he still has a top-40 world ranking and will compete across the globe this summer.
Freshman Ezzy windsurfs the world’s waves:
If you ask freshman Graham Ezzy how he spends his summers, you will likely receive an unassuming response about windsurfing or traveling. Later in the conversation, however, details about competitions from Maui to Portugal will hint at the truth: Ezzy is a professional windsurfer, one of the best in the world.
“Coming from Hawaii, it isn’t that hard to get into the ocean sports, and Maui happens to be the best place in the world to windsurf,” Ezzy said.
By the end of his sophomore year in high school, he had developed a love for windsurfing and had joined the pro circuit.
“At 15, I showed up in Barcelona for a PWA [Professional Windsurfers Association] event on my own with all my windsurfing equipment,” Ezzy said.
Since then, he has proven himself to be among the top in the world, finishing third at the Men’s Open Aloha Classic in 2006. And despite the time commitments and pressures that came with being a professional athlete, Ezzy still maintained his academic focus.
“My parents expected me to go to college, but they didn’t have any preference as to where, and the same went for windsurfing. They didn’t expect me to do anything specific; they just wanted me to commit myself to a sport and to my academics,” Ezzy said. “My parents [emphasized] the act of doing it rather than the destination, so that really allowed me to make a lot of the decisions on my own.”
For Ezzy, the key was separating the windsurfing aspect of his life from his academic commitments.
“I always saw school and windsurfing as two separate entities, and I couldn’t let them overlap,” Ezzy said. “Doing well in one isn’t an excuse for doing badly in the other.”
Given this balance, it’s hardly surprising that Ezzy decided that getting a quality education took precedence over being a full-time professional. Nonetheless, Ezzy noted that many people are surprised by his choice to attend Princeton.
“When I decided to attend Princeton and people started to find out, the other pros treated me like I was dying, telling me it was such a shame that I ‘had to go to college,’ ” Ezzy said. “And some people I met at Princeton were pretty surprised that I wanted to come to college in New Jersey.”
“But I felt like it was important to really concentrate on academics, and I wanted to go to the East Coast because I wanted a change,” he explained.
Despite not being able to practice every day, Ezzy is still in the top 40 in the world, and he is confident that this summer will be his best season yet.
“The three times I’ve gone back to Maui this year, for Fall Break, winter break and spring break, I windsurfed better than ever before. I’m doing better now than when I was training a lot because I’m more focused and more consistent,” Ezzy said.
He attributes his physical improvement to being part of the men’s lightweight crew.
“I needed to find a way to stay in shape, and going to the gym and staying in a routine is so tedious, especially without a trainer, so I was looking at sprint football and a few other things,” Ezzy said. “But on Outdoor Action I became friends with one of the heavyweight recruits, and he talked me into going to the first practice. I felt like I improved quickly, and I enjoyed it.”
Ezzy also said he feels that he has improved mentally, which he attributes to the focus required in Princeton classes.
This summer, Ezzy will again travel to Europe to compete against the world’s best before returning to Princeton in the fall.
“I’m going to go straight from Princeton to Portugal for a world cup, and then I’ll spend some time in Spain doing some other world cups and training. Then I’ll probably go to Germany, France, Italy and maybe Poland,” Ezzy said. “Then after that I’ll do some promotion in Oregon and Washington, then a world cup in Brazil, and then school starts.”
To people who don’t know him, the combination of a Princeton workload and professional athletic competitions may appear unmanageable and overwhelming. But Ezzy lists these events as though describing his weekend to-do list, and that is hardly surprising given his ability to keep both aspects of his life balanced and in perspective.
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