Oct 01, 2019
Brian Hackman — Competitive
Charger Tennis | Class of 2022 | Island Lake, Illinois
WORDS and PHOTO: Calli Townsend
For sophomore tennis player Brian Hackman, Hillsdale feels like home. It's a place that matches his values and allows him to feel comfortable, and it happens to be where his twin sister Sarah is, too.
"My sister got an email from the tennis coach first and I didn't really know anything about Hillsdale, but my parents and grandparents did, so when that came on the table, they were like, 'Brian, you need to email the men's coach,'" Brian said. "You can quickly realize this place is extremely unique."
Brian says he appreciates Hillsdale for the fact that it doesn't accept any government funding so it can allow students to learn in a more full and free way.
"It can just be its own thing and make its own rules without having to worry about being politically correct with everything," he said. "It just lets you think for yourself and not be so afraid to hide your faith."
The closeness of Hillsdale's campus and the smallness of the class sizes were also a big plus for Brian. As he got older, he appreciated a smaller, genuine community when he switched to different church which helped him grow the most in his faith.
"I grew up going to a huge church which is like the second biggest church in the country now. I remember going to the kids' Sunday school classes and they always made it fun, but we didn't really love it. It was so big it almost got political," he said.
So after a couple years, the Hackman family moved to a smaller, non-denominational church.
"It was really simple and down to Earth and the services weren't even an hour long," he said. "It just made God feel a lot closer and not so far away. And part of it was just us getting older, but there I could understand more and they'd just talk about things very practically."
Brian likes to understand things so he can make the most out of them and be the best at them. This is true in sports, school, and faith. He certainly has a competitive spirit.
"I played a lot of sports like baseball, soccer, and basketball, but eventually I kinda started slowly quitting the other ones before like 11 or 12 years old," he said. "I'm really competitive and I really hated losing."
He said that despite being better at baseball than tennis, he chose tennis because it's a more individual sport and he hated losing that badly.
In addition to being competitive, Brian is also determined. His adjustment to life as a student-athlete at Hillsdale didn't go as smoothly as he would've liked, but since then he's improved his habits and wants to stick to them.
"The first semester I really didn't excel very much, between just balancing school and social stuff and tennis. I was obviously a student-athlete in high school too, but here it's just different," he said. "But I've improved my GPA in the spring semester and I'm confident can keep that up."
Brian is studying biology in hopes of pursing a career in the medical field. He isn't exactly sure what that will look like yet, but he has shadowed several different doctors ranging from cardiologists to anesthesiologists.
"I find those interesting, but the schooling they require is a little intimidating," he said.
His passion for the medical field is inspired by his father, who is a fireman and EMT, and his grandfather, who is a dentist.
"I've spent 24-hour shifts with my dad and the calls we'd see were sick people and injured people," he said. "And my grandpa was a dentist and he always mentioned he found the medical field very rewarding. And more recently, my mom has breast cancer and so that's another thing. There's a lot of brilliant people that try cure cancer and try different things."
But Brian doesn't think he wants to go into cancer research. He'd rather do hands on work with patients. No matter what he ends up doing, he's got the determination and competitive nature to allow him to be the best.