‘It’s been a pretty long path but ... it’s been more than I ever expected’
The collegiate sports experience has given Brandon Watson a sense of perspective he admits was absent when he first embarked on his career as a student-athlete.
“It’s been a pretty long path but in the end it’s been more than I ever expected,” the oft-honoured goalkeeper with the Clan soccer team begins. “If you had told me four years ago that I would have accomplished all of the things that I have, I’d have said you were crazy.”
Yet it’s because Watson realized early on that academics were the foundation to his postsecondary life that his journey is finishing on a true high.
Starting his university career on the eastern seaboard at NCAA Div. 1 Coastal Carolina, Watson noticed a nagging pain in his hip region. Bone spurs were wreaking havoc on his cartilage, and surgery to correct to the problem not only shelved him from his sport for two seasons, but threatened to end his days as a competitive athlete.
Watson returned home to Victoria, enrolled at UVic for two years and just concentrated on being a student.
“Before, it was all soccer, soccer, soccer,” he says. “But I’ve kind of changed my thought process.”
Still, he all but assumed his career on the pitch was over until SFU called and asked him if he’s like to come out of mothballs.
“I have always been a pretty smart guy, so when SFU gave me the call and said they needed a goalie, I was motivated,” he explains.
“I didn’t know if I would ever play again, so all of this has been pretty crazy.”
Indeed. From nearly giving up on the game, Watson has reinvented himself both on the field — as an all-district all-star selection who led the GNAC conference in shutouts this season with 10 — and in the classroom, where he posted the GNAC’s highest men’s soccer grade point average at 4.11 as a kinesiology major.
He’s even been appointed one of the team’s learning coaches, mentoring incoming players on the best ways to find the perfect academic and athletic balance. Truly, it’s been a full-circle journey.