Jamal James Hill: True champions are champions of causes. True champions are champions of movements. They provide voices to the voiceless. They represent something much greater than themselves.
Wow, the emotions of being in the water… it’s a state of peace. It’s exciting, especially being somebody living with disability. A lot of things I’m limited to on land. In the water I can fly, I can flip, I can walk, I can run, I can jump, I can dive just as deep or as far or as long as I want to. So, I guess the greatest emotion would be a sense of empowerment, and I think that’s what drives my desire to share that with others.
Being an Angeleno means a lot of things. I grew up in the city of Inglewood. That’s a part of Los Angeles County, right? So, I’m an Angeleno, no doubt, but before I’m an Angeleno, I’m from Inglewood and Inglewood is the city of champions. What does it mean to be a champion? Being a champion is more than just winning medals, being able to jump the highest or run the farthest.
I think the greatest value that underpins anyone dealing with a challenge, whether it be me dealing with a physical disability or someone with a mental challenge, emotional challenge—we all have things that we’re facing in this world, and most times it’s, it’s a secret, it’s hidden to most others—so the most important value is acceptance. Acceptance of yourself. And that was something that I really struggled with when I was diagnosed with my disease. I carried a lot of shame around it. I didn’t want it to be acknowledged. In fact, I did everything in my power to hide it and to blend in. But it wasn’t until I started to accept myself—I understand that regardless of what’s going on in my body, I’m still a complete human being, I still deserve love and all the things that anyone deserves—that I was able to, I was able to love myself and my story enough to share it and in turn give others the permission to love themselves and share their own stories.
I’m sharing my love, my affinity, my sense of empowerment through the water with the work that I do. Not only myself, obviously it takes a community. So together, we are working to teach a million people every year, all around the world, how to swim. We focus on people who are economically disenfranchised, kicked aside by the systems that exist, excluded from opportunities that ultimately, in the case of swimming, will save their life. We focus on creating a sense of inclusion around aquatics.
That’s, I think, the most valuable aspect of sport in relation to life. Sport is not so much competition with others, right? Competition with others is more so a metaphor for the internal competition. What helps us to become the better version of ourselves, the us that we dream of becoming one day, that us that we’re striving for… that, I think, is the truest essence of the marriage between sport and life.
I believe being a giver is probably the best occupation you can have in this life, quite frankly. That’s the greatest occupation any of us can have, and the beautiful thing is, it’s open to all of us.
My name is Jamal Hill, and I believe in the transformational power of sport.
