Around The Islands
Feature Profile
Bryan Clay: Hurdles to Success
The image of Bryan Clay, running the victory lap with a billowing Hawaiian flag, remains fresh in our minds. How do you make that leap from Kaneohe "problem kid" to an Olympic silver medalist? How do you hang in there, when everything in your life appears to be crumbling away? For Clay, who clinched the decathlon silver medal in the Athens Summer Olympics on August 24, 2004, it has been a long and challenging physical journey, as well as a spiritual one.
He speaks with ease as he goes through his warm-up exercises. He recalls that as a child, he started life fairly undisciplined. "I was probably that kid you didn't want to get in your class if you're a teacher. Because I was just a bad kid, I was always getting into trouble. I was always fighting, and I was kicked out of school when I was in kindergarten — they asked you not to come back. It was just brutal…" He would lie, get into fights, get caught doing graffiti, but "on a scale of 1 to 10, never did anything extremely bad."
The Kid Rebel
The teenage rebel — who didn't see himself going anywhere, who thought he was going to live and die in Hawaii — says he NEVER got away with anything. "I ALWAYS got caught, and my mom used to tell me: Bryan, don't you realize — (and I still hear her voice today) — that there's a reason why you always get caught when you do something bad? It's because God has a plan for you. You're going to be somebody one day, and He can't have you getting away with these things now, because you won't be the person He wants you to be later on in the future."
Bryan Clay is the first Hawaii high school graduate to conquer an Olympic medal in track and field, taking second behind Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic. In less than 8 years since completing Castle High, he has soared to great heights. As he warms up to get into the training mode, each movement is clean and controlled. Each muscle moves with grace and perfection, like an antelope or a panther, depending on the speed — a work of art that might've been sculpted by the hands of Michelangelo himself. Standing 5'11" and weighing 174 pounds, the years of self-discipline and workouts are clearly evident.
School
Not everything came easily to Bryan. He hated school and never took it seriously. Looking back now, he thinks it was because he wasn't enjoying life, and he didn't understand what an education had to offer him. His wish? "I wish…I wish…and I tell my wife this all the time…I wish that I could go back and do it all over — educational-wise…I'm trying to get myself to start reading. You have no idea how hard it is as an adult now, to want to read, but not be able to get into a book because you never trained yourself to do that as a kid. Lately, I've been reading more…I just wish that I could go back and really do it differently in school."
Growing Up In Hawaii
When Bryan Clay was growing up in Hawaii, he was very laid-back, never in a rush. He had no idea what he wanted to do. "Hawaii is kind of a world of its own — there's not a whole lot of emphasis in getting a higher education and doing much in life. I wasn't being pushed to go to college, to do something. It seems like it was so protected, maybe too protected…" But growing up in Hawaii definitely had its pluses. He found himself to be a lot more tolerant and respectful of different cultures than the other people on the Mainland.
Off To College
By the time he was finishing high school, he and his family were having a difficult time getting along. "You know it's funny, but honestly, the reason why I went to college was to get away from my family." Once in Los Angeles, life turned non-stop, always in a rush, ten different things in one day. It became a whole new ball game. Clay, the son of a Japanese American and an African American, had to deal with issues of race, steer clear of neighborhood violence, adapt to an entirely new way of life. "You just start realizing the cultural differences…I married a Caucasian girl from Seattle. She's white (Swedish and Norwegian). I dated her for five years, learning about the differences between her family and mine."
Heartbreak
Meeting that one special person in life has its magical moments, but for Clay, it was full of air pockets, speed bumps, and misfires. "I met Sarah when I was in my freshman year in college. She was a very strong person with very high standards and very high moral values. We started dating, and we REALLY struggled. The fact that she didn't want to bring her standards down just so she could date somebody…I really had an issue with that. But I knew from the very get-go, that this was the girl I wanted to marry."
Bryan and Sarah kept breaking up every other week. "There were all kinds of things — I didn't know how to love somebody without putting my hands on them or buying them things — I just didn't understand it. She had a different view of love and things like that." It was the end of Clay's sophomore year. They stayed 'broken up' that entire summer. When Sarah came back from summer break, she had pretty much moved on. Clay's life was shattered. He thought he had lost everything. "It was the first time I ever found out the term 'heart-break' was like a literal feeling — that heartache was a literal pain that you felt in your chest…I'd just get nauseous thinking about it… all of a sudden, I was praying to God that He would just let her call me. I wanted to talk to her again." It was an emotional upheaval that Clay had never experienced in his 20 years of life.
Struggles
When Sarah finally did call, she made it clear that she did not want to get back together "until Bryan became the man that he wanted to be." She was the only person Clay had really shared his heart with: all the things he wanted to do with kids, and who he wanted to be when he was older. She also knew that he was trying to be cool, he wanted to fit in, he wanted to be popular, and he thought that was what was going to get him through everything.
Bryan's reaction? "You've got to be kidding! OK, that's fine. How are you going to know when I become this man that you think I should be?" She answered in two words: "I'll know." That upset Bryan, "Are you freakin' joking? What am I supposed to do with that?"
Support Accountability Group
What appears to be the worst incident can sometimes end up to be the best turn in your life. Clay says, "At times, you just think, 'There's no way it can get any worse than this, and I just don't understand how this is going to make me a better person.' And time passes, and you get through it, you look back, and you're just like: UNBELIEVABLE that it took something like that to produce something like this — to be able to look back and be satisfied and know that everything happened for a reason."
The breakup with Sarah propelled Clay into some real soul-searching. He tried to figure out who he wanted to be. "What do I want people to say about me when I leave the room?" He found himself a mentor who challenged him to think who he was and where he was in life and where he wanted to be. He got involved in an accountability group with a few other guys. They started holding each other accountable to promises they made to themselves or to the group. They tried to "better each other." It worked. It turned Bryan Clay's life around. Soon, Bryan and Sarah were talking again. Things were once again looking good in Clay's life.
Haunting Past & Devastating News
Every once in a while, life throws you a bombshell. Some decisions made in the past may come back to haunt you. They return at the most unexpected moments. People from Bryan's past brought devastating news that he thought might ruin his life. "I remember going back to my house and just being scared out of my mind, basically cussing God out… 'How dare You do this to me? How can You do this to me when I just gave my life to You, when I just committed to doing the things I'm supposed to be doing? This is NOT fair!' I thought my entire life was just going to go under…"
Getting Through The Darkest Moments
Finally, after days, it dawned on Bryan that just because he had decided to change his ways, it didn't mean that he doesn't have to face the consequences of decisions he previously made. It really broke him. "I got down on my knees, and I just prayed, 'God, if this is how You're going to use me, so be it. If this is what it takes for You to use me as a story, so be it. And if I'm not married, and if I can't have kids…if my track career is done… if everything I wanted never happens, I guess that's just the way it has to be…and I'm going to follow You anyway.' I really believe that was the turning point of my life. I started making God first. I made a list of five things that I could delegate all my time to. I put them in priority, and I still do that today."
As soon as he did that, Bryan Clay's athletic performance took off. "If you're asking me, there's nothing else that I can attribute to my success, except for the fact that my faith is what got me through and has allowed me to do all these things. Everything I thought I was going to lose, I got and more. I think a lot of the spiritual struggle caused a lot of my physical pain because I was at a place of spiritual unrest when I was growing up."
More Than Anything In The Wolrd…
Bryan Clay is only 25. He feels like he's learned so much, he can't imagine what else he's going to learn down the road. "When I look back, there are so many little things that happened in my life that have made me who I am today…I couldn't have done it without my mom, my step-dad, my real dad, my high school coaches, my current coach…I went to Hope Chapel and all the people there, and all the people at New Hope, my grandparents, my Jiji and Baba, and all my aunties and uncles — I couldn't have done it without any of them." He now understands so much more of just what others had been trying to do, what others had been trying to pass on to him.
What Clay wants more than anything in the world is to be "the greatest dad on the face of the planet — the best dad and husband I could possibly be." Right now, that's the number one priority of his life as he welcomes his new-born baby, Jacob Ezra. But the gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China is definitely a dream for the decathlete. "I'm still going to give 100% to that."
BRYAN CLAY, OLYMPIC SILVER MEDALIST
THE BRYAN CLAY FOUNDATION
Clay has another dream. His passion for working with kids has prompted him to start the Bryan Clay Foundation. He wants to help underprivileged kids and youth get a higher education, to give them a plan, a hope in something to look forward to in the future. He plans to provide scholarships and hold camps, not just for sports but also about nutrition, good health, physical fitness, and about enjoying life.
Less than ten years ago, Bryan Clay was a feisty kid growing up in Kaneohe, running around less-than-ideal muddy tracks with potholes. But he chose not to fall back on the excuses. The "stuff inside" propelled him to pursue his own personal world and turn his dreams into reality. What he had perceived as "problems" at the time didn't really matter that much — he cleared them as hurdles that would eventually lead him to big-time success. And he continues to strive each day to make the Olympic gold a reality.
