Columbia athletes juggle roles as students, sportsmen, soldiers

Two athletes from two countries have two very different stories to tell—but they have two things in common. Both freshman squash player Andrew Tan and senior swimmer Hyun Lee chose to come to New York and study at Columbia University. And both were also required by their countries to serve in the military.

Tan is a native of Singapore, where men ages 18 to 21 are required to serve for 24 months. He enlisted between January 2008 and December 2009 before coming to Columbia. Lee is from Seoul, South Korea, where a 21-month service is mandatory. The swimmer took time off between his junior and senior years in order to meet this requirement, and has only just returned for this spring semester.

Initially, both Lee and Tan went through six weeks of basic training, just like every other enlisted male.

“I went there and learned how to shoot guns and how to throw a grenade—like basic military training for six weeks,” Lee said.

Soon afterwards, both men took very different paths.

After finishing his training, Lee was selected to swim for the South Korean Army and eventually joined the Korean national swim team. While living on military base for only athletes, he trained daily.

“We did military training once a month and the rest of the time I just swam, trained, lifted,” he said. One year later, he made the national team and lived on a base with all the national swimmers.

“I trained a lot. I was in the military, but I also trained hard for almost two years, so I improved—I got a little faster than before I left Columbia.”

While swimming for the national team, the senior trained with the sensational Park Tae-Hwan, who is the reigning Olympic champion in the 200 and 400-meter freestyle. Lee traveled with the national team to the Asian Games this past November, where he earned himself three bronze medals, showcasing his admirable swimming aptitude.

Tan, on the other hand, elected to go to officer school for nine months. “The joke is the nine months you spend there is the nine months it takes to conceive a child,” he said.

After completing his training, Tan headed a platoon of 28 men. “We were specializing in low-intensity conflict—like what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. It’s not like all-out war,” he said, describing the specific type of service he and his soldiers performed.

“They call it security ops,” he added.

Unable for security reasons to describe specific missions and locations he saw during his command tour, Tan was able to recall his most memorable moment over the course of his nearly two-year service—an intensive survival course which required him to lead his men through various difficulties. During the course, Tan lost 16 pounds in nine days.

Perhaps, though, the most striking part of the experience for the now-Columbia-freshman was his position of power. The foot soldiers that serve below officers—like Tan—generally drop out of school at the age of 12 and are potentially juvenile delinquents.

“That was the best part of it—learning how to deal with really different kinds of people,” Tan said.

But now, both swimmer and squash player alike have either returned or started their time at Columbia.

Lee, who has had a two-year hiatus in between his studies, finds the transition back to working somewhat difficult. “It’s kind of hard to be in classes again. I haven’t done any work for two years and it’s pretty hard for me now. But I hope it gets better.”

Concerning Lee’s albeit short swimming season, it’s hard to believe that it could get any better. Despite the team’s nonstop intensive training, as well as having taken a two-month break from swimming since his time in the military, Lee has already managed to break several pool records. Most recently, he broke his own pool record from two years ago in the 200-yard freestyle in last Friday’s dual meet against Navy.

“He does everything so well that it’s kind of hard not to just sit and admire. His acumen for the sport is such that a lot of it just comes naturally,” swimming head coach Jim Bolster said, while describing the joys of having Lee as a swimmer on the team.

Lee first began swimming when he was five years old while his family lived in Hawaii. At a nearby swim club, he began his training early under Olympic Hall-of-Famer Rowdy Gaines. He continued to train and improve, and eventually chose to come to Columbia because he wanted to continue to swim.

Bolster has noticed an improvement in Lee since his two-year stint in the military and believes that this bodes well for the senior during the most important meet of the year, the Ivy League Championships. “He’s just a little bit ahead of where he was before he left and hopefully that will parlay into some good swims at championships,” Bolster said. Once Lee is tapered and well rested, he should make huge waves at Ivies, the one and only decider of men’s swimming rankings among the Ancient Eight.

Tan, on the other hand, has been quite pleased with his newfound amount of free time, which is his favorite thing about Columbia after squash. After having strict time regiments, Tan enjoyed being able to choose what he filled his afternoons with.

However, he soon found himself needing to fill the expansive empty space with some activity, which is why he joined squash midway through the fall semester. He had seen flyers advertising tryouts for the team that head coach Jacques Swanepoel had posted.

Tan played squash while growing up—it was a popular sport in Singapore—and was pleased with his decision to join the team. He was quick to draw parallels to the team and his time in the military, saying, “In the military, you spend time with a lot of the same people, so there’s a lot of camaraderie, which is what I feel that is quite strong on the team here as well. Quite remarkably, there is a lot of team bonding.”

“I’ve been thoroughly impressed,” he added.

So has his coach. The squash team, which is 10-3, is having an extremely successful first varsity season and is currently in the top 20 teams in the nation—an impressive showing, considering Swanepoel only expected them to break the top 24.

About Tan, Swanepoel said, “He’s probably the most focused and calm person in our matches. No one on the team stays as focused in the matches. You can see people go up and down, but Andrew’s a really hard worker. He’s been a great addition to the team. We’re lucky to have him, actually.”

When looking at both Tan and Lee, the prowess and skill each possesses within their individual sports is evident and that alone earns them distinction among their peers. Perhaps this is yet another similarity between the two Columbians.

However, it is the two markedly different stories they have to tell that can truly astound.