[This is the extended and unedited version of my article with Justin Washington. This differs from the DEN a little bit, and this has bonus material at the end, so to speak.]
Life is full of struggles and senior thrower Justin Washington knows that all too well.
When he was younger his parents split up and his family bounced around a lot.
“I did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Washington said. “There was a whole lot of moving around. I bounced around from place to place. Pretty much at the start of every school year I was in a different school and a different town. It wasn’t until the end of junior high and start of high school that I actually had somewhere steady to stay. I lived in a single parent home and my mom did the best she could. My parents split when I was very young.”
By his own accord, he was a trouble maker growing up. He didn’t always fit in with others and had authority issues.
An interesting fact about Washington is he has a twin sister and a brother who used to be a star football player at Northern Illinois University.
“My older brother was everything you could ask for in a brother and so much more,” Washington said. “A lot of who I am is from my brother. We took a lot of the same paths academically and athletically. He is a good person to model yourself after and I think I did that.”
He said he and his twin sister have a special bond and no matter the issues between them the bond will never break.
Like his brother though, he did multiple sports growing up, but he always tried to find a way to make sure he just wasn’t in his brother’s shadow.
“I don’t want to be that exact carbon copy of Martin Wilson, I want to be Justin Washington,” he said. “He is a great guy and has done well for himself, but I want my own path”
He started out at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville before transferring to Eastern.
“I transferred because I didn’t fit in the way I wanted to be fitting in there,” Washington said. “It was quiet different culturally from what I am used to in northeastern Illinois. I come from the suburbs of Chicago. The way people operate and think; their views and opinions differed greatly from mine. A lot of the people there I didn’t vibe well with. Athletically it wasn’t what I wanted. I was like, I need something bigger and something better. A lot of things were affecting me personally and back home.”
His mother was battling cancer at the time so that caused a distraction for him since he wanted to be back home with her.
While in UWP he tried some different things to become more “zen” and centered to be a better overall person.
One of his true loves is poetry and that is a way he found to vent in a safe way.
He has also done yoga to try to be more level headed.
“I like to experiment with my body,” Washington said. “I like to do new age exercises and new styles of lifting. I did do yoga religiously my freshman and sophomore year of college. I am all about being zen. A level head and a clear mind. That is the way I compete. A chaotic mind equals a chaotic performance. I really believe that and I live by that.
“I used to be really mean and violent and aggressive and all that did was got me no where or in trouble constantly. It wasn’t until I mellowed out and became more zen, things got better for me.”
After he decided to transfer to a different university, he was heading towards going to Illinois State before coming to Eastern at the last second.
“I had everything lined up to go to ISU [Illinois State], I had the schedule completed,” Washington said. “ISU was probably going to be the school, but the problem was I was going to be just a regular student. I was like two seconds away from going to ISU, but I ended up here, so I guess it is fate.”
Justin has now been at Eastern for a few years and admits it has been rough at times.
“When I got here I was ok, but a lot of things came up back home again,” Washington said. “The way I was functioning as a student was not ideal. I hope to finish with a stronger GPA this semester than the last few semesters. I want to say I finished the way I wanted to finish upon graduation. I don’t want to have any regrets academically. I mean, that is the worst feeling you can have, regretting things. You are a student first and an athlete second. I am not going to be throwing a discus or hammer for the rest of my life.”
——————————————–
He also wanted to let people know of some of his hobbies that didn’t make it into the article.
He is an avid gamer on computers. He loves World of War Craft, Command and Conquer, and Age of Empire to name a few.
He said if communications [his degree] doesn’t work out he would be open to going to culinary school. He loves to cook and to quote him, “Eat a lot of food.”
He likes to make alterations to fish tanks. He likes to mess around with them to make them better appearance wise and for the fish. He doesn’t like what some companies do when they sell the fish, especially Beta’s. He feels Beta’s are like the new goldfish.
He was originally scared of doing track because the guy doing shot put was a big guy compared to Justin. But over time he got over his fear and actually out performed the guy, he also got bigger than him.
Overall, he works his best to be the best person he can be for himself and others. He even said, “I hate not being able to fix problems.” The quote I liked the most from him was, “I want to be everyones superman.” By that, he means he wants to be able to always help his friends out when they need it. He wants to fix any problem that has sprung up for them. In his opinion he is an easy person to get along with and he hopes others can recognize that in him.
He also is a very curious person, he stated that he will always ask why when something occurs. He likes to know the ins and outs of peoples decisions into why an event occurred.
He also found poetry was a great way for him to vent, and his actually has a collection of poems written up on his computer and he adds to it as time goes on.
2 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
What a good article. He sounds very honest and humble, and this was all very interesting to read!
Thanks Courtney! I am glad you liked it, he is a cool guy, you would like him!