Learning the Balance of Work, Life, and Sport: Jacob Aduama '07

LEARNING THE BALANCE OF WORK, LIFE, AND SPORT: JACOB ADUAMA '07

From an interview by Bob Little, Director of Athletics

If Park had an Athletics Hall of Fame, Jacob would surely be part of it. He is among the Park athletes who have gone on to play sports at the Division 1 level in college, and continues to play soccer semi-professionally. But while his athletics accomplishments are extraordinary, he also exemplifies the values underscoring Park’s mission to cultivate the “whole child”: well-rounded students who understand who they are, who discover their passions, find their voice, and combine these experiences to make thoughtful, well-informed choices.

A 2007 Park graduate who attended Park from Grade 1 through Grade 9, Jacob was recognized at his Park graduation for his unique contributions to the community:

While you are a multi-talented student and athlete, it is the strength of your character that has defined your very special place here. Through your dignity and your quiet intensity, you have inspired others. Of particular note, in small and often unseen ways, you have been a caretaker and protector of younger students throughout the school. In your words and your actions, you consistently have demonstrated that pride in oneself is at the core of respect for others. Simply by sharing your strong sense of self, you have deepened and dignified the understanding of diversity that is so central to our mission at Park.

These days, Jacob lives in Gothenberg, Sweden, where he is group manager at Volvo Autonomous Solutions in charge of the team that conducts in-vehicle testing for Volvo’s self-driving vehicles and machines. He’s been in Sweden for five and a half years now, and when he isn’t working, he plays soccer at the semi-pro level, with three training sessions per week and matches on weekends. The balancing of work, life, and sport is

important to Jacob, and something he believes he first learned at Park.

Thinking back on his Park experience, Jacob says that the fact that he had the ability to play sports competitively at the middle school level, and the opportunity to explore, was significant. “Even if there were three sports I always played, I tried some other ones in between. You really had the flexibility to try different things,” he recalls. And, even though he and his teammates worked hard and played hard, there was also the freedom to have fun. “I think that helped me.” he says, “I played because it was fun, not because I felt I always had to prove something, or be pushed.”

While the soccer field, basketball court, and track may have been where Jacob found natural affinity, his Park Physical Education experience taught him all the more. “Everyone had to do it, even if you didn’t want to.” For Jacob, this became a lesson in community building. How might he help get peers who were less interested in an activity excited about joining? “As a group, the P.E. teachers always challenged those who were stronger athletes to help others on the team,” he says. “For me, this meant gaining a greater understanding of team sports. I learned that we were better if I passed to other kids. I learned that the team was better if I helped others be better.” The broader lessons—patience, and the ability to respect and appreciate different talents—continue to resonate for Jacob. The skills he gained in working with others with different interests and perspectives, he says, have carried forward into his professional and private life.

“MY FIRST TEAM CAPTAIN EXPERIENCE WAS AT THE PARK SCHOOL. BEING ABLE TO DO THAT AT A YOUNG AGE WAS A HUGE ADVANTAGE.”

Park was also where Jacob had his first real leadership opportunity in athletics. “My first team captain experience was at The Park School. Being able to do that at a young age was a huge advantage.” The lessons transcend the playing field in so many ways. In 8th grade, Jacob was spotted by a coach scouting for Northfield Mount Hermon, which launched the conversation that eventually brought Jacob to NMH, where he was a three-season athlete—soccer, basketball, and track & field. Jacob reflects that the opportunity to be a multi-sport athlete at Park was another big plus. Park always encouraged this, and yet when Jacob got

to NMH, he found he was the rare three-season athlete. “That was something I took with me from Park,” he says, “both physically and in terms of passions for different things I loved to do.”

These days, the trend toward specializing in a particular sport happens much younger. Even at Park, students sometimes find themselves caught in the middle between their club team and their Park team. Jacob believes this is unfortunate, noting that he had friends at university who studied Kinesiology, which reveals the great benefits to young athletes playing different sports while they grow. “While you are growing,” he says, ”your muscles and body can cope with different actions, but if all you are doing until you are 20 is kicking a soccer ball, there’s a risk that you won’t have trained the rest of your body as well.” It also expanded his understanding of the game. Playing basketball, for example, helped him be a better goalkeeper in soccer, not only because it trained his ability to jump, but because it taught him to “read the angle of the ball, and how to track it in the air.”

It was exciting, Jacob says, to play sports at a higher level at NMH, where he was soccer captain his senior year, and then to go on to captain the Division 1 soccer team at Northeastern, where he majored in Chemical Engineering. His commitment to athletics taught him valuable lessons in time management. “My parents were always ‘education first’ when I was younger, so I knew that if I wanted to keep playing sports, I had to keep my grades and performance up,” he says. “When I got to NMH, I saw that some of my classmates weren’t used to that, and they had a harder time adjusting to the challenging schedule.” By then, however, the need to set

Summer Bulletin 202221

“MY FIRST TEAM CAPTAIN EXPERIENCE WAS AT THE PARK SCHOOL. BEING ABLE TO DO THAT AT A YOUNG AGE WAS A HUGE ADVANTAGE.”