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Lessons learnt as one of New Zealand’s most promising long jumpers are standing Sam Colyer in good stead as he leaps into the next phase of his life.
The former SBS Bank Academy Southland athlete has been working at SBS Bank’s Invercargill branch since last November as a Service Consultant, learning the ropes behind the teller and welcome desks.
“I’m working with some great people and I’m really enjoying it,” the 19-year-old said.
For someone who did better at English and PE than maths at school, this isn’t the path Sam would have predicted a few years ago.
As one of the country’s top ranked long jumpers Sam shot to prominence when he was one of five athletes presented with Nick Willis Scholarships at the 2017 Colgate Games.
The following year he was selected for a three-week tour of athletics meets in California, followed immediately by the Oceania Polynesian Games in Vanuatu.
At the time he was a member of Academy Southland, a two-year programme which supports Southland’s most promising sports people with nutrition, mental skills, strength and conditioning and athlete life.
Advice downloaded during the programme would guide him through the challenges to come.
When his motivation waned, he was able to lean on the Academy for support, but it was a severe injury in 2020 which has proved to be the major ‘Sliding Doors’ moment for Sam.
After deciding to take a break from athletics, he was playing on the wing for the Blues division two rugby team when he fell awkwardly in a tackle and badly dislocated his left foot, the one which had previously powered him to a personal best of 6.98m and a silver medal at the 2019 Oceania Championships.
It is an exceedingly rare injury. Sam’s doctors had only seen something like it once before – the x-ray looks like a fault line running through the middle part of his foot and it was not a surprise when the doctor advised him that he would never be able to do long jump again.
The dislocation required emergency surgery and there was a risk that he could have lost his foot.
“It actually worked out worse than if I’d snapped my foot in half. When they tried to put it back into place it cut the blood flow to my foot and twisted all the tendons. A couple of weeks later I had surgery to put plates in and fuse the bone,” he said.
“When I was first sitting on the field after I did it, I knew that my athletics career was finished. I felt disappointed, but I wasn’t heart-broken because I’d had a pretty good run.”
Athletics provided Sam with some moments he’ll carry for life. Winning Colgate Games medals on his home track, the overseas competitions. He remembers the feeling when he leapt past 5m for the first time, not long after his good friend Jonty Carran tragically passed away. The pair had competed alongside each other since they were 10.
Sam believes he can now apply what he learnt as an athlete to his life.
“Coming from Invercargill, it’s a great community but it can be more challenging to be successful as things become more serious and I take that resilience with me now.”
Source: Academy Southland, Republished by arrangement.