WEST LAFAYETTE – Every Olympian has their own story.
Jay Patrick's unlikely journey forges its own path.
Twice, Patrick thought his sports career was over.
The first time was when she broke her spine as a gymnast at age 15 in California, and the second time was a year ago, when she was finishing up her senior year as a diver at Northwestern University.
A broken spine ultimately led her to the pool, where she used her gymnastics background to try new disciplines, jumping off a board and doing flips and twists.
Jeja Deranja Patrika, a senior at Northwestern University and representing Latvia, placed 27th at the 10-meter World Diving Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, marking the end of Patrik's diving career.
more:Before retiring from coaching, Adam Soldati led five Purdue divers to the Olympics.
“I coached him for one session at the world championships in Japan last year, and we just started talking,” David Boudia, then an assistant diving coach at Purdue and a former Olympic champion in the men's 10 meters, told me. “What are your goals? What do you want to do?”
Patrick wanted to return to Evanston, Illinois, to attend graduate school and had already been accepted into a graduate program at the Kellogg School of Management.
Patrick still had one year of collegiate eligibility remaining, and Boudia gave Patrick the motivation he needed to get back into the diving well for one final dive.
“He said, 'We're going to chase this dream. We're going to take you to the Olympics,'” Patrick recalled. “That's how much a coach believed in me. I've never felt that much faith from any coach before.”
“I realised that at the very end of what I thought was the end of my career and I had no choice but to carry on.”
Patrick submitted the proper paperwork and committed to Purdue's diving program on July 25, four days before the application deadline for the graduate certificate in communications and leadership that brought him to West Lafayette.
Still, as an American citizen, Patrick's chances of becoming an Olympian were slim.
But Patrick was of Latvian descent, so he had a chance.
Patrick's grandfather emigrated from Latvia at a young age, and when Latvia gained independence in 1991, new laws made it possible for anyone of Latvian descent to obtain citizenship.
“My grandfather jumped on it in the early 2000s when my cousins and I were young,” Patrick said. “He got all of us, all of my immediate family, citizenship.”
When Patrick was a sophomore at Northwestern University, it was her grandfather who suggested she change her nationality to play internationally for Latvia.
At Purdue, competing under Adam Soldati and Boudia, known for their track record of producing Olympians and NCAA national champions, Patrick mastered two new diving skills and qualified for the NCAA Championships.
“She came to Purdue wide-eyed, energized and motivated, and she learned two new dives that were difficult to master,” Boudia said.
But the Olympics were still far from a certainty.
After taking his qualifying test in February, Patrick waited four months for a call, but it took so long for him to get one that when he finally did he thought it was a prank.
“After the European Championships, I thought this was going to be my last competition again,” Patrick said. “It was mid-June, so I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I can't go (to the Olympics).”
While walking with his mother, Patrick's mobile phone was ringing with various foreign numbers, and Patrick was so close to answering the calls that he thought they were spam. “Congratulations, I'm an Olympian,” Patrick replied.
“My heart sank,” Patrick said. “It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, the biggest weight I'd ever felt. My mom and I both immediately burst into tears.”
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @samueltking.
