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Texas track and field athlete Osawese Agbonkonkon has a variety of interests away from the sport, including writing science-fiction novels and becoming an entrepreneur.<\/p>\n
Courtesy Osawese Agbonkonkon<\/p>\n
AUSTIN\u00a0\u2014 Osawese Agbonkonkon was stumped.<\/p>\n
When a prying reporter asked him what he does in his spare time, the 21-year-old from Frisco had to give it some thought.<\/p>\n
Not because he doesn\u2019t have a wide variety of interests. He does. Oh, does he ever.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s just the concept of free time that he struggles with.<\/p>\n
Pressed on the subject, this full-time Texas Longhorns<\/a> track and field athlete who is also a part-time science-fiction novelist\/business entrepreneur\/movie buff\/aspiring lawyer and economics major offered a leisure moment. But it\u2019d be wrong to say he dabbles in those other ventures because any one of them could be worthy of a total commitment.<\/p>\n He wants to do it all and in no particular order. Just quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s very driven,\u201d his father, Nosa, said in a classic understatement. \u201cHe\u2019s very smart and very knowledgeable about a lot of things. He\u2019s just in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Osawese (pronounced Osa-way-say) did admit he enjoys a pickup basketball game or two at a nearby park with a core of about two dozen friends.<\/p>\n \u201cI model my game as a shooting guard,\u201d said Osawese (which means \u201cGod has blessed me\u201d in his native Nigerian language)\u00a0Agbonkonkon. \u201cI\u2019m pretty explosive, and I can get to the rim on anybody. I can dunk, but I try to avoid it.\u201d<\/p>\n Greg Harrell can vouch for that. He was Agbonkonkon\u2019s Wakeland High School track coach and convinced him to try high jumping after seeing him in a basketball warmup drill as a freshman.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s got athleticism through the roof,\u201d Harrell said. \u201cBut he\u2019s very much a technician. I could ask him to watch a video for an hour about how to make his approach better, and he\u2019d do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cBig O,\u201d as Agbonkonkon was known then, was extremely raw, but shortened the learning curve and improved his jumps by 7 inches from February to May of his junior year. He hit a personal-best 7 feet at an area meet and finished fourth at the 5A state meet.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wanted to run sprints, too,\u201d Harrell said. \u201cHe probably could have been a good 400 runner.\u201d<\/p>\n Even before switching to basketball, Agbonkonkon used to play soccer as a youth and for a long time regretted not seeing that blossom. He refused to even watch pro matches until recently being captivated by the World Cup<\/a> action.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve gotten over it, but I was not engaged for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I was really good at it and felt I could go pro.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not saying I was THAT good,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I could play at a very high level. I have to say I think Argentina\u2019s going to win. They\u2019ve got some magical powers to behold, the way they\u2019ve come back to win.\u201d<\/p>\n Texas high jumper Osawese Agbonkonkon is coming off back-to-back appearances at the NCAA championships.<\/p>\n Courtesy Osawese Agbonkonkon<\/p>\n He\u2019s all about magical powers and wrote about such in his first sci-fi novel that took six years to write. He could use some himself because he\u2019s had his share of patella tendinitis in his right knee the past two seasons, not exactly an ideal condition for a high jumper who has a personal best of 7-1 \u00bd and is coming off back-to-back appearances at the NCAA championships with a 16th-place finish in June.<\/p>\n Not that anyone dare suggest he slow down. Not that it would do any good.<\/p>\n This Texas senior-to-be doesn\u2019t has no desire to taper off and hasn\u2019t since he began writing that first novel as an eighth-grader. Yeah, eighth grade when others were struggling with surviving puberty and having the courage to invite a girl to the middle school dance.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n He\u2019s been full speed ahead ever since. Some may think he\u2019s going too fast in too many directions, and he concedes that he\u2019s very goal-oriented.<\/p>\n This bespectacled, 6-foot-3, 183-pound athlete with locs and a slight gap-toothed smile on loan from Michael\u00a0Strahan knows only one pace.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to be a well-known, sci-fi author,\u201d he ticked off his goals without at all sounding arrogant. \u201cI want to be an executive producer. I want to win an NCAA championship. I want to go pro in track. I want to get two more graduate degrees. I want to go to law school. Once I get healthy, I feel I can take my sport by storm. And I think all of this is very achievable.\u201d<\/p>\n And why wouldn\u2019t he think that? This is a kid who went on his own to the family\u2019s local bank to apply for a credit card in high school. He\u2019s off to a good start.<\/p>\n As for his writing career, he\u2019s been a huge sci-fi fan since he first watched the trailer to the \u201cDune\u201d movie series. His favorite television show was and still is Richard K. Morgan\u2019s \u201cAltered Carbon,\u201d a Netflix story set 360 years into the future about consciousness traveling across different bodies that \u201cblew my mind.\u201d In fact, he made changes to his own book after watching it a second time.<\/p>\n Agbonkonkon was always naturally curious as a young boy and accepted the role of independence and self-reliance early on.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember one time he bought a book about neuroscience,\u201d his dad said. \u201cI asked him why, and he said he just wanted to learn more about it.\u201d<\/p>\n He went through another phase later and took to reading books about cooking, prompting his father to ask, \u201cAre you going to be a chef?\u201d<\/p>\n Why not? Add it to the list?<\/p>\n Heck, he became entranced with investments and was trading stocks while he was still in high school.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s into everything,\u201d his dad said. \u201cAnd he\u2019s so attentive to details.\u201d<\/p>\n Osawese Agbonkonkon hopes to finish the second and third books of his “Psychic Suit” novel series by year’s end.<\/p>\n Courtesy Osawese Agbonkonkon<\/p>\n His fascination with sci-fi grew when he was in elementary school and became smitten with sci-fi guru Isaac Asimov\u2019s \u201cFoundation\u201d series about the fall of a space empire.<\/p>\n Further motivated by a fifth-grade teacher who had also written a sci-fi book, Agbonkonkon took to writing at a feverish pace early on. Starting in 2018, he cranked out a first draft of 40,000 words on his personal laptop although he actually began writing out the narrative of \u201cPsychic Suit\u201d long-hand because, as he explained, he\u2019s more of tactile person and adores the feel of pen to paper.<\/p>\n He\u2019s the only son of Nigerian parents, a father who is a chemist and a mother who is a financial advisor, and a brother to four high-achieving sisters. He\u2019s close to his family\u00a0\u2014 one reason he left Oregon after one season and transferred to Texas\u00a0\u2014 but he also routinely escaped into other worlds as a voracious reader as a youth.<\/p>\n He\u2019d become so familiar to his high school librarians that they\u2019d allowed him to skirt the rules of no more than three books at a time and check out up to 10 books simultaneously.<\/p>\n He even jokes that he basically stalked a female classmate who had checked out the third book in a series called \u201cFive Kingdoms\u201d and confesses to \u201cpestering her\u201d to finish it before the upcoming, long Thanksgiving weekend.<\/p>\n So it was only natural that he turned quickly to writing himself.<\/p>\n \u201cI can tell a story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He completed that first book in six years, a work that has attracted national attention with articles in The Athletic<\/a> and Ebony magazine<\/a> and a live interview with Fox television. \u201cWe\u2019re in talks with \u2018Good Morning America,\u2019 \u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cA strength of his is prioritizing his time,\u201d Harrell said. \u201cHe came into high school acting like a professional. He has so much going on and is such an intellectual, but he\u2019s flexing different muscles that are not competing with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s very clear he\u2019s establishing his brand without sacrificing his devotion to his grades and his jumps. He\u2019s done interview with 40 different media outlets in six states.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s really disciplined and smart,\u201d said his agent Ishmael Lawrence, who also represents former Longhorn linebacker Malik Jefferson for In Real Life Talent. \u201cHe still excels in every space at a high level. Nothing seems to be negatively impacted. Sometimes I go, \u2018Man, you\u2019re a machine.\u2019 He\u2019s quite impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n When Agbonkonkon\u2019s not pursuing his track career, crafting his second and third books in his \u201cPsychic Suit\u201d series about characters with mystical powers trying to thwart villains trying to steal the family\u2019s business of precious alien metals or playing hoops occasionally, he\u2019s got other things in the works.<\/p>\n For instance, he\u2019s written about 97,000 words of a TV Bible, a retelling of the major events in the condensed Christian book that he\u2019s shopping to Hollywood studios. He\u2019d like to wrap up his second and third books of \u201cPsychic Suit\u201d by the end of the year. The University of Texas helped him publish the first one, which sold a couple thousand copies.<\/p>\n Who knows what Agbonkonkon\u2019s future has in store?<\/p>\n He\u2019s also an unabashed fan of Ian Fleming\u2019s James Bond novels and movies and particularly loved \u201cSkyfall.\u201d While not exactly in the sci-fi genre, Bond did employ a number of futuristic gadgets, and Agbonkonkon recognizes that every actor in that leading role from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig almost seemed to have their own magical powers at times.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no question Agbonkonkon has a license to write.<\/p>\n Heck, could he ever envision himself as a writer to continue the Bond series?<\/p>\n \u201cOh, that\u2019d be a great experience,\u201d he said with a hearty laugh. \u201cI just hope it\u2019d remain faithful to Fleming\u2019s vision and is treated with respect.\u201d<\/p>\n Wherever his path takes him, it seems more than reasonable that he\u2019ll be a big success. After all, he doesn\u2019t accept failure. He\u2019s got a 3.8 GPA and a book to his credit as evidence.<\/p>\n In this age of NIL and commercial endorsements, Agbonkonkon continues to create his own future and build his intellectual property with his own fertile imagination of worlds beyond his own.<\/p>\n \u201cHis story truly resonates because it challenges the stereotypes,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cHe definitely proves that athletes can be elite in competition and the classroom. He\u2019s a living example of that. This is only the beginning for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas track and field athlete Osawese Agbonkonkon has a variety of interests away from the sport, including writing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-378622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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