Back from a world away
By Ben Badua
Nearly 7,000 miles away from Western
Massachusetts, Jae Heo of the Amherst men’s soccer team sat
quietly, reading in one of the two Starbucks cafes in his hometown
of Changwon, South Korea.
Having scored 12 goals in his debut season with the Lord Jeffs en
route to a national semifinal appearance, he proudly wore his
Amherst sweatshirt while on winter break in 2008, knowing full well
what awaited him in just six short months: the beginning of a
two-year stint with the South Korean army as part of his
nation’s mandatory military service requirement.
Sitting alone, he noticed a group of college-aged kids (two
American, two Korean). They were speaking in English, a rarity on
the southern tip of the peninsula.
“Seeing my Amherst sweatshirt on my way out, one of the
Koreans stopped me and asked if I went to school in the
States,” recalls Heo. “It turns out that he was a
graduate of Bowdoin and an officer teaching English at the Naval
Academy. He handed me his business card and I contacted him the
next day.”
Following that chance encounter with officer Wan Ki Park, Heo
switched his enlistment from the army to the navy and in June found
himself at the R.O.K Naval Academy, half a world away from the
Pioneer Valley but just 15 minutes from his boyhood home. Arriving
on the first Monday of the month along with 600 other new recruits,
Heo was suddenly faced with his new reality.
“I couldn’t quite grasp being in the military until
the day I got to the base,” says Heo. “I heard from
many people that boot camp was going to be tough. I was kind of
anxious and scared, not necessarily about the physical rigors but
the mental stuff.”
After listening to formal speeches from the Admiral and Head of
Parents, Heo said goodbye to his family and snapped last-minute
photos.
“Next thing you know there were 20 training guards,”
Heo says. “They started blowing whistles, yelling orders and
putting us back into rows. They had these rings on their boots that
would make a sound whenever they walked so you could hear them
coming. The louder that sound got, the more everybody started to
get nervous.”
Entering the navy as a seaman apprentice, Heo survived on three
small meals a day consisting of: rice, kimchi and a bowl of soup.
He dropped nearly 20 pounds during basic training. For the next
four weeks, Heo endured a grueling regimen designed to transform
him into a soldier. Days began with a shower at 5:30 a.m. and
ended with military drills at 10:30 p.m.
Educated at the Pennington School in
Princeton, N.J., Heo is fluent in English, a skill he eventually
parlayed into a sought-after position at the academy following boot
camp.
“During the second month of training someone from the
English department came to interview me for a teaching assistant
opening,” says Heo. “Those positions were so rare and
unique, but I impressed the interviewer and got a spot.”
Needing to attain four stripes or the rank of petty officer 2nd
class before being allowed to return to civilian life, Heo spent
the remainder of his tenure as one of 12 English teaching
assistants at the naval academy. He graded assignments, translated
documents, tutored cadets and even taught class.
Amherst was never far from Heo’s thoughts. Soon after
earning the right to make phone calls and access the Internet he
began calling his teammates to catch up and talk soccer, usually
for 20 to 30 minutes at a time (without giving much thought to his
parent’s long distance phone bill).
“Every chance I got I would check the Amherst website to see
how the guys were doing,” says Heo. “More than
anything, I just missed being with them. The team was about
brotherhood, caring and love and it was what I missed the
most.”
“Every time we talked to him you could sense that Amherst
was the place he wanted to be,” says teammate James Mooney, a
senior. “Being in completely different time zones, we would
get calls at these absurd hours. I remember talking to him at 4
a.m. sometimes. During my sophomore year he even called us before
one of our games and we put him on speaker phone. He said some
things to the team and that got those of us that knew him
motivated.”
Continuing to serve as the team’s biggest cheerleader south
of the 38th parallel, the days quickly turned to weeks and the
weeks into months as Heo’s time with the navy drew to a
close. Completing his service obligation this past summer, he
interned as a research assistant at the Boston Consulting
Group’s Seoul office before returning to Amherst.
Having only kicked around the ball with the naval academy’s
soccer assistants a couple times a month over the last two years,
Heo was understandably anxious when he first stepped back onto
Hitchcock Field for the Jeffs’ preseason workouts.
“I was frustrated because after not playing for two years,
my touches weren’t as sharp and my instincts were a little
shaky,” says Heo. “During practices we would have
shooting drills, but I just couldn’t score. It started to get
in my head. I was being negative and losing my
confidence.”
Mooney and fellow teammate Lennard Kovacs, a
senior, continued to encourage Heo. “I just told him
he’d be fine,” said Kovacs. “Soccer is your
passion. It’s inherent. It may take two or three weeks to get
your touches back, but it will come to you.”
Kovacs was right. It started with a goal in the team’s
annual preseason alumni game. Then another in the squad’s
season-opener against Colby-Sawyer. Before long he’d added
three more goals and an assist against Bates and Middlebury. His
reward was a NESCAC Player of the Week honor and a 5-0 start for
his beloved Jeffs. It was almost as if he’d never left. But
despite his early-season success, an older, more mature and more
appreciative Heo didn’t lose sight of what was important:
team first, everything else second.
“At the end of the day, I don’t care how many goals I
score,” says Heo. “It’s about teamwork. My
mentality this year is just to do whatever I can to help the team
win.”
To that end, Heo emailed his teammates to dedicate his NESCAC
Player of the Week award to each of them – a gesture that
impressed head coach Justin Serpone.
“Dating back to his first year Jae’s always had a big
personality, but he wasn’t necessarily a leader,” says
Serpone. “Now he’s absolutely turned into a leader and
I definitely credit some of that to his time in the
military.”
Settling back into the life he left two years ago, things have
come full circle for Heo. Gone is his daily military routine,
replaced by an equally regimented, yet wholly different existence
as a student-athlete. His next (and possibly more daunting)
challenge? Hitting the books and getting re-acclimated to the
rigors of academic life.
“Honestly, I went to my first couple of classes not knowing
what they were talking about,” Heo says with a smile.
“Being away for two years I feel like I’ve forgotten a
lot of what I learned during my first year, but my motto since the
military has just been to stay disciplined and love to do what you
hate. I’m more mature now and I take things more seriously.
That’s helped me in soccer. Maybe it can also help me boost
my GPA.”
