Many athletes have talents outside of sports that they can use to fall back on if an athletic career is not what they choose to do. There is an athlete at Oxford Academy High School who is not only a phenomenal athlete but is highly skilled musician, has coaching experience, a solid foundation in Mathematics and is a published writer. The athlete I am talking about is Lee Sasaki, who just finished up his Junior year at Oxford Academy and has been a member of our program since the Spring of 2015 and that same year he was able to earn the high school’s Athlete of the Year Award.
Lee has been apart of the high school’s Track since since his freshman year and was part of his middle school’s Cross Country team. In high school he has competed in the 100 meter dash, 4×100 meter relay team, Triple Jump and his main event the Long Jump. He also has been mastering the art of Karate for over thirteen years and competing in Parkour for the past four years. This past Track Season he was able to jump over twenty feet, which was a personal record for him and in his Freshman year was able to help his relay team to a place third finish in the Academy League Track & Field Finals. Lee does not only excelled on the Track but in 2016 he received the Karate Shodan Award and in 2015 and 2016 he was able to take first place in the Temecula Parkour Competition.
The list of Lee’s athletic accomplishments is small when compared to what he has done outside of of athletics. He is a current member of the Instrument Music Council, Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) member, The American Red Cross and was a Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Accreditation Committee Member for the 2014-2015 school year. Last year during his Summer break, Lee held an Internship at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County Medical Innovations Institute and an emergency room shadowing Internship at UC Irvine Medical. Lee has been able to travel across the country to have an opportunity to play at New York’s Carnegie Hall and New York’s Central Park with the Oxford Academy Jazz Band. With the band they have performed at the Cypress Public Library and for two years performed on stage at the Disney Performing Arts along with another two years in the park performance at Knott’s Berry Farm. From 2014-2016, Lee has conducted once a month musical performances at the Oxford Academy’s Multipurpose room for the Coffee House Musical Performance School and Community Outreach Volunteer Program.
With Music and Athletics a big part of his life, Lee has also been committed to giving back by helping youth athletes with coaching over 100 hours of Karate instruction at the Cypress Recreation Center. For the past six years Lee has volunteered for the Dale M. Inouye Foundation with their Annual Golf and Basketball Tournaments. He has been tutoring students in Mathematics at Oxford Academy and has also volunteered his time for the Ronald McDonald House, where he provided dinners along played games with the kids and families.
As I stated before, Lee is not a well rounded athlete but he is also a scholar at his high school with a 4.5 GPA for his Junior year and a 4.3 cumulative high school GPA. From 2012 -2017 Lee has been recipient of the Oxford Academy’s Patriot Recognition Award, in 2016 he received the Academic Merit Award in Biomedical Pathways, and from 2014-2016 Lee also received the Academic Excellence Awards in Social Science, Health, Music, English and Science. With all these awards and accomplishments, Lee has one fun fact about himself that is a big goal for some people, he had published a 170 page book in 2011 entitled “Celebrating What Is Important To Me by Creative Communication”.
With everything that Lee has done in his life, he still has more to accomplish in the years to come. He is focused on working towards a career in the Medical field and has looking at Yale for his top school of choice. There are other schools that he has on his college list in case Yale is a far reach for him, such as Willamette, William & Mary, Swarthmore, UCI, UC Santa Cruz, Pomona, are a few he’s considering. With all of the areas that Lee has been able to excel in, it makes me proud to say that I have been able to help him reach his athletic goals and we still have more personal record to surpass for next year.