Senior Jaden Hancock tours

Portugal to play professional soccer

by Emilie Takahashi

Senior Jaden Hancock is comfortable with the uncomfortable. Even by himself an ocean away in Portugal, Hancock fnds himself comfortable on trial with professional soccer club Gil Vicente, one of the top ten leagues in the world.

On his way to the airport, his coach forewarned him: “They will look at you as their enemy, but continue to play hard. Coaches and players will ignore you.”

He told him not to take it personally and that he would gain their trust “through his play.” When he arrived, he met players from Ukraine, Spain, Portugal, Africa and as his coach predicted, Hancock was greeted with a “cold welcome.”

“These kids are all competing for a job. It’s their livelihood. So when I go over there, they think, ‘Who’s this kid from America trying to take my spot?’” Hancock said. “I have to get myself in that state of mind, to think, ‘I’m fghting for this,’ because that's what it is for them.”

For two weeks Hancock trained, getting home from the stadium around 7 p.m. every night. After the frst couple of days, he got to know his teammates better and started making friends.

“In the face of something that I’ve wanted to do for so long, sacrifcing the familiarity of home is nothing compared to what might come up,” Hancock said. “The passion that I have for soccer drowns out the feeling of missing my people at home.”

The Expo marker message, “Play professional soccer in Europe” has framed his mirror since he was 10-years -old. Seeing the note daily, Hancock drives himself toward constant improvement through training.

“It requires an extreme amount of work to become good at what I want to be good at,” Hancock said. “But that made me confdent in myself; I know I put all the work in. I’ve been at that wall more than anybody.”

It was no surprise to Lee Hancock, Hancock’s father, when he scored the winning goal at the 2022 CIF Championships.

“It says just a lot about who Jaden is, that he never stops. He hates losing and wants to win. That desire and passion to continue to look at yourself and say ‘I have to change if we’re not winning yet' leads to those types of moments,” Lee said.

As a self proclaimed “late bloomer,” Hancock hasn't always been the strongest or the biggest on the feld, something that Lee calls a “blessing.”

“The fact that it hasn't been easy for him is the best thing that ever happened to him,” Lee said. “Because if you want to play at the highest level, you're going to face a lot of obstacles and if you get that opportunity to fail early, and then to overcome those, it becomes the focus on the journey as opposed to the destination.”

Although he aspires to play professional soccer, Hancock knows it doesn't have to happen right now. He plans on pursuing a college education because “there's still a lot of life to live after soccer.”

“Soccer is one aspect of who he is. That's how a lot of kids know him but he's a good kid with a good brain and a big heart,” Lee said. “He's a good problem-solver. He's a good friend. He's a good teammate. And those aspects of him are more important to me than his quest to be a professional player.”