For my community connections project, I interviewed an SFU basketball player named Claudia Hart. She is currently in her second year of schooling at Simon Fraser University. Here is Claudia’s Statistics on her first 2 years of SFU women’s basketball, Claudia Hart.

When asking her why she is so passionate about this sport she states that “it was always a dream of hers to play for a university” and once she got that opportunity she was extremely motivated to represent her school. Through this, I learnt that when having a passion you have to believe that you can succeed within your passion and in the end, if you have worked hard enough for it you will get to your end goal. Claudia being a student-athlete has gone through her fair shares of obstacles. For instance, she has dealt with a number of injuries but she learnt that through those injuries it made her love the game of basketball and appreciate it even more. Secondly, another challenge she faces is being a student-athlete. Having this role means having a commitment to both schooling and your team. So she has to manage her time very well in order to be successful. Some advice she passed on to me was exactly that, to be organized. As she said, “it takes a lot of time management to be a student-athlete”. You have to be able to stay on top of your classes and workouts. As Claudia says “this is a crucial part to her success in the classroom and on the court”. When talking to her she definitely recommended this as a possible career path for fellow athletes because she knows that not only is it about sports, it is also about her future. She knows her end goal here and that is to be a successful person that has a degree from a great school as well as being a great athlete. Claudia believes that it has been such an honour to be going to that school as well as playing there and I think that was her passion to keep doing so. She has adapted as a person throughout because she had to face adversity several times. Adversity can have a grand impact on someone’s life, especially the life of a student-athlete. When talking to her about this she said that over time she learnt how to deal with it. But at the same time school was very difficult for her and the fact that she managed her time well made her organized and an extremely hard worker. Claudia is definitely willing to be contacted by other riverside students through Instagram. (@claudiahart23)

Interviewing Claudia helped me to understand how far a passion can take you. The fact that she is doing something she loves at a university level is unbelievable. I learnt several things for example when going into post-secondary you need to be organized in order to be rewarding in the end. Another idea that I have learnt from this project is how to face adversity, by working as hard as you can so you will be able to persevere to the best of your abilities. Interviewing Claudia for the Community Connections project connected to me because I aspire to take my passion for basketball as far as I can. This could mean just playing senior or even university. But either way I am and will most likely always try to be a student-athlete as I am very passionate about sports. Now that I have made this community connection I think it has opened up opportunities for me to learn more about post-secondary as well as opportunities around basketball, for example, chances for me to work with her or to experience one of SFU women’s basketball games. This project helped me to understand what could happen if I keep going with my passion which was very rewarding to know.

Sources

https://athletics.sfu.ca/roster.aspx?rp_id=4243&mobile=skip

http://www.gnacsports.com/gnac/news/2019-20/13333/saac-spotlight-simon-frasers-claudia-hart/

https://www.google.com/searchq=claudia%20hart%20sfu&tbm=isch&hl=en&hl=en&safe=strict&safe=strict&tbs&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA830CA830&ved=0CAEQpwVqFwoTCIjbvLrL8ucCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAC&biw=1440&bih=789#imgrc=egR0lgAwteO6QM