Osawese Agbonkonkon excels as a high jumper at the University of Texas and publishes his first novel, showcasing talent both on and off the track.
DALLAS — Osawese Agbonkonkon played several sports as a young child growing up in the Frisco area.
One of which was not track and field.
In fact, he didn’t participate in any track and field event until his junior year at Frisco Wakeland. However, it didn’t take long to see the raw talent he possessed and the potential for a collegiate career in the sport.
In the span of a year, Agbonkonkon had received offers to compete as a high jumper at some of the best Track & Field programs in the nation. He initially decided to attend Oregon, before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin.
“How would you describe the student-athlete experience at UT?” WFAA’s Michelle Montaine asked the sophomore high jumper.
“It is second to none, from the athletics to the academics, everything at Texas is over the top,” Agbonkonkon remarked.
That phrase could also be used to describe the young man’s innate abilities and determination. And that’s what’s led to his widespread success at just 20 years old.
If we flash back to ten years ago, Agbonkonkon was sitting in his fifth-grade classroom getting prepared to take a standardized writing test. He said that the prompt is what sparked his love of writing.
The prompt “told us to create our own story… so I went home that day and just continued writing that story”.
That story eventually took him three years and 150 pages of handwritten work. Upon the completion of that first project in 2018, Agbonkonkon embarked upon the writing of Psychic Suit, his eventual first publication.
He said the idea for the book stemmed from his days playing on the trampoline with one of his childhood friends.
“We were outside on our trampoline, coming up with all these ideas, that’s when it came to me… We would play make believe with cartoons and things we’d seen on TV or videogames, and over time I started jotting down some book ideas from that.”
What began as an idea morphed into Agbonkonkon’s first novel.
“The book grew over time; it grew as I did. As I gained more knowledge, there were certain things I wanted to talk about in the book: mental health, political power, and the way wealth interacts in the world. As I grew in knowledge, and just wanted to talk about things in fiction that would differentiate my work from everyone else’s.”
However, that wasn’t the only thing differentiating Agbonkonkon’s work from other published authors.
“I’m doing something off the track that’s great, but I’m also doing stuff on the track that’s great. So let me blend my athletics and academics and see what I can do with this,” Agbonkonkon said.
What all he can do with this remains to be written.