At some level, every high school athlete experiences the transition when attending an NCAA university with an emphasis in athletics. You may have come from across the street at Waiakea, but the world isn’t quite the same anymore.
Not as many teachers and parents looking over your shoulder is a new kind of freedom, but it gets pinched by the knowledge that you are now in control of your future in a more serious way than ever before.
In this on-going dance of gaining maturity and restraint while pursuing a passion, few of them wind up with the sort of college career experienced by University of Hawaii at Hilo midfielder Adam Colton. A senior midfielder from Sheffield, England, his upbringing, it’s safe to say, is distinctive among this year’s graduating Vulcans’ players.
Colton grew up in a soccer-crazed town that feels the game arguably, as much as any location on earth, surely as much as any in England.
Sheffield is a steel town — think Pittsburgh only with English football — that is one of a handful of places that lays claim to having the first, or one of the first, soccer clubs in England. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club was organized in 1867, as an offseason stay-in-shape kind of activity for the members of the cricket club, which had been formed a decade earlier. In little time, the cricket team faded from view and Sheffield Wednesday (the day of the week on which the matches were played), battled Sheffield United for the pride of the city. Those two still play for the same bragging rights and Colton will pull for “The Wednesday” every time.
He had visions of a professional career when he entered the Huddlesfield Town Football Club academy, where students are immersed with soccer and in the off time do their studies under watchful eyes. It’s essentially the reverse of the American system in which academics are supposedly stressed first, with athletics as a backup.
“My dad had a run at the professional game and it was all I ever wanted,” Colton said last week prior to his final home game for the Vulcans. “I spent a few years (with Huddleston), doing everything I could but you eventually come to the realization that you are not going to be a superstar.”
Colton spent some time making plans with his parents and coaching friends and eventually decided to come to the United States to get an education and continue playing. He stood out at Santa Barbara City College and was interested in the idea of playing in Hawaii.
“Soccer is all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever wanted to be a part of my life,” he said. “When it comes to an end, it’s going to be very emotional for me, I have to say. All those years playing as kid, then the academy, then four years of college and now.”
His voice trailed off, the sentence left unfinished. What about now, or the next two weeks when the final UH Hilo games have been played?
“It will be time to put on my big boy pants and look out at the world to see what I can see,” Colton said. “It will probably be the biggest shock I’ve ever had, for the first time in my memory, I won’t be playing, I won’t have a team for my motivation. I can’t tell how I will react, it’s something I’ve never faced.”
When it’s over, Colton’s name will not own Vulcans’ records for goals or assists, his team is 4-9-0 and 3-5 in the Pacific West Conference. It would be a monumental achievement if the Vulcans could win more than they lose in their final five (all road) matches, but it’s a long shot.
“You always see a fairy tale ending when you dream about your future,” he said, “but the dream never quite lives up to the reality and that’s just part of being adult, looking at the world more realistically.
Colton intends to take his communications degree and chase a masters degree, while coaching 8- and 9-year old keiki, “and after time, I might want to work my way up.”
“He’s a great leader,” said UH-Hilo soccer director Lance Thompson, “he is a passionate, concerned and dedicated role model of the type you don’t get to be around very often. To say we will miss him is an understatement.”
The reverse is also true.
“I’ve loved it here,” Colton said. “I come from a place where soccer is everything, they talk about it morning, noon and night. I think I might be the only player from my town to get to play out his soccer career in Hawaii, that’s something so many at home would love to do, I can say I did it.”
Not bad for a steel town kid
