Heart of the Axe: AJ Magamura

I first started playing sports around the age of six when I was in first grade. My first memories of playing sports are mostly of my cousins and I playing soccer whenever we would get together at my grandmother's house.

I think my childhood, in relation to my sport, was very important for my parents. My parents saw me playing sports as a way to learn life lessons from participating and being engaged in the sport as I grew up and developed over the years.

I learned important personal character traits like discipline, being more organized, and having self-motivation. Showing up to training and showing up to games, even sometimes when things weren't going well, really was self-motivating for me. My parents weren't really the ones to try and push me to show up to things, but they wanted me to learn to push myself to be more engaged and take the lessons and try to continue to learn and take the lessons that I learned from my sport and try to apply them in my own personal development.

A UNIQUE RECRUITING PROCESS

I’d say my recruitment process was a bit unique from the normal circumstances. I was living in Dubai and studying at a university while playing for a club.

It was actually the coaches at the club that I was playing for that ended up talking to me and asking me about my recruitment process because I was trying to transfer to a university in Canada.

They talked to a couple universities, talked to a couple of coaches that they knew over here, and got some replies back.

Acadia for them was the main one that they thought would be the best fit for me, not just in terms of sport, but also in terms of my academic success. They were looking for the best place where the two of those would mix well together. And for them, Acadia was the best recommendation that they could give me.

Acadia wasn’t even on my radar. But they made me aware of it and were like, “We know you hadn’t considered Acadia, but we think this is something you should look at.”

I looked around at the website, tried to find as much information on Acadia as I possibly could on the academic side in terms of the business program and what kind of opportunities would be offered there. I also looked at the athletic side as a student-athlete and what that experience would be like as a student-athlete.

I was trying to learn as much as I possibly could because obviously this was a massive decision for me to make. And the next step after that would have been me having a couple of meetings, I think one or two, with Amit (Batra), who was recruiting me at the time.

He basically outlined how he saw me fitting in, not only in the program as a player, which was very important for me, but also how he saw me fitting in as an individual within the university, fitting in as an individual within the community of Wolfville as well.

And there was a lot of opportunity for success and growth in different areas here. For me what was really important was not only the athletic opportunity, but also the opportunities to grow as an individual, not just a student, not just an athlete, but also as a person.

That’s the main reason I chose to come here. I felt like Acadia was the best place for me to have opportunities in different areas of life and not just confine myself to one box or continue down one path and not explore other possible options of development as a person. I thought that it gave me the best possible options to grow in many disciplines as a person and learn many new different things about myself while I'm here.

MY TIME AT ACADIA

I think my transition from high school to college from an academic standpoint was pretty smooth. I feel like my high school had set me up in a lot of ways to be very well prepared for the different challenges that I’d experienced while I’m in college, especially in that first year.

I think the only difficult side would be from the social or personal standpoint, where I am coming into a completely new environment and culture with completely different kinds of people than I'm used to.

I think it just takes a while for me to get used to the new environment and for the new environment to get used to me as well, but I was very lucky and blessed that I had such a welcoming and accepting group of teammates. And to be completely honest, I’d say that for both on the men’s and women’s side, just a whole lot of people that were very accepting and welcoming and wanted to learn all about me and where I come from. They were willing to also share any experiences that they had of being a Canadian and growing up here.

That allowed us to connect on a more personal level. I’m grateful for that because it allowed me to be more comfortable quickly and adapt to my new environment fairly quickly as well.

I’m in my third year here, and I’ve completely fallen in love with this place. We want to keep pushing the bar and keep striving to be better each and every day. I love the environment and the pressure of trying to be the best and striving to push each other to be our best both on and off the field.

As a midfielder, I’m always trying to create as many opportunities as I can for my teammates, and I feel like that’s what we’re all doing here. We’re all pushing each other to create as many opportunities as we can to be successful.

No matter what sport you play, I feel like that’s what it’s all about. I also love the community here in Wolfville. They support us in everything we do, and it’s a great feeling knowing that they’re behind us no matter what.

I’m so thankful to be a student-athlete at Acadia, and I’m so glad that I made the decision to come here. 

FAVORITE MEMORIES

I think my favorite memory with my team would probably be most recently in our preseason trip to Montreal. Overall, the whole trip for me was a massive positive because it was really eye-opening and allowed me to see how patience is really the best trait you can have as a person.

During our preseason trip to Montreal, we looked like a completely different team than what I think most people have seen before. It really was due to our patience in allowing ourselves to develop as a team to become better and better each year as individuals.

We've now gotten to a point where we feel like we're not even at the at the best possible place that our program could be, but we know for certain that we're slowly becoming better and better as a program and that's due to our individual contributions that have allowed us to grow as a whole.

I’m really thankful for that experience because it allowed me to put my time here, as part of the program, into perspective and realize that even if things don’t go right the first time you try, having patience and continuing to work at becoming better at something that you love eventually results in progression in the positive direction.

IMPACT ON THE FUTURE

I think the biggest lesson I have learned from my experience at Acadia is to engage with as many different things as you possibly can. And when I say things, I mean anything from people, to activities, to volunteering, all kinds of things like that because you never know who you might meet, you never know what you might learn, you never know what opportunities might be offered to you.

I’ve learned and gained so much from just putting myself in completely unfamiliar situations. That has allowed me to grow as a person and learn what I’m capable of, as well as just learn about different kinds of things that I’m interested in.

Taking that knowledge and experience, the advice that I would give to someone who wants to be where I’m at is just to be consistent and patient.

One thing that I’ve learned and one thing that I’ll always remember for the rest of my life is that no matter where you want to be, no matter who you are, as long as you are consistently working at what you are trying to achieve, you will achieve what you want eventually. And that goes hand-in-hand with patience because you may not get the results at the time you expect them.

Or you may be doing about the same amount of work as somebody else but not get the same results as they’re getting at the same time that they are. But you will get those results eventually if you continue to work at whatever you’re aiming to achieve. Because if you stop and are inconsistent, you’ll never get to where you need to be. But if you continue to consistently work, there is no way that you won’t achieve what you want to achieve.

As I get ready to graduate next year, I feel like I’ve grown so much as a person on and off the field. I’ve been able to have so many different opportunities to learn and grow, and I am so thankful to be a student-athlete at Acadia. This has been one of the best experiences of my life, and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me.

Heart of the Axe is a weekly feature from the perspective of Axemen and Axewomen student-athletes. It dives deeper into why they decided to attend Acadia, what drives them athletically, how they got started in their sport, the impact Acadia has had on them during their time in Wolfville and much more.