Our brand ambassador, Samuel Ricketts, is a full-time badminton player who has represented Jamaica at the junior and senior levels. He’s sat down with us to talk about his journey so far as well as his thoughts on what he wants the future to look like.
Q: What inspired you to become a full-time Badminton player?
A: I started playing Badminton in my hometown, Mandeville, Jamaica at age seven. My coach at the time was Mr. Ranger. While going to tournaments, travelling and playing, I got that sense of representing my family, representing my country, representing myself but ultimately representing my faith, which for me, is believing in God.
I would only play two tournaments per year and would train for those tournaments towards the end of the year. Later on, going to Loughborough University (at age 19) opened my eyes to the world of sport and how people conduct themselves and how they chase after their goals and desire to continually improve.
(Before university) we were training and getting everything from our coach which was good, but there was not a sense of us driving something forward. For me it’s that sense of pushing toward a goal, pushing towards something that is a challenge, that would pull you toward being a better version of yourself.
It was like “hey let me try and see how far I can take this by giving it my best”. I was in a good environment at Loughborough university where it was a student-athlete kind of setup. Being able to study, being able to train and see how top athletes trained. Waking up at 6 a.m. to train at 7 a.m., going to class and then coming back to train again.
Just seeing that kinda atmosphere and culture I was like “hey I want to see if I can push as far as I can in this thing.” I love badminton, so why not?
Q: What has the journey been like so far?
A: It’s been up-and-down, it has its moments. There have been times when I’ve felt like I’ve hit a plateau in terms of my skill and my belief in being able to see how far I can progress. But, I would say it has created a change of the internal man.
Most people think athletes are separate from the being, but the whole world is kind of intertwined. Your spiritual man, your family man, you know, how you are as an athlete. Sometimes certain things will progress faster than others but you know they are all intertwined.
So for me, that’s been different because during training when I was younger and I would be pushing and learning what my coach is saying and giving my best but there wasn’t a sense of me really driving things forward. I would have won things when I was younger, mostly as a doubles player because that’s my preferred version of the game.
I love the interaction with someone else and sharing a common goal, pushing toward something together, and having that sense of accountability between you and your partner….working towards something. The fact that knowing your partner is beside you pushing you, that’s what allows you to give your best and honour that thing between the two of you.
I haven’t always been a singles player, I’ve mostly been kinda orientated towards doubles. I had a lot of success coming up but It’s not always easy to have a partner to travel with or be on the same page with you. So when I traveled to England, I ventured more into singles.
When I was 17 in Jamaica I started playing singles a bit more and I started to do better, realizing that sometimes your journey is with other people but sometimes the journey is your own. You have to learn not necessarily to keep a standard for yourself but know the standard or the gift God has given to you and offer it back to Him.
That was the switch from being doubles-oriented to singles-oriented. It has been hard because sometimes working with a partner can make some things easier, whereas with singles you’re on your own. Generally, singles is a harder form of the game – and recently I’ve been doing good in doubles with my old partner, Gareth. We got closer, and us getting closer helped to strengthen our game. We won the CAC games in 2018, however, the Pan-am Games (2019) was a downer but you give and you get.
Sometimes I feel like my career would have been better, looking at some of the juniors I would have beaten or been on par with when we were 18 yrs old. Looking at them now and they are a little higher now top 50, top 70 and knowing I’m probably top 200.
For me, it’s just giving your best every moment and knowing that sometimes God has a different calling for you. Maybe you know it’s a different time. It’s all about tomorrow, it all about today, it’s all about now, what can you do now? It’s been up and down, but some people don’t get anything. It’s about learning to be grateful for where you are and what you have achieved.
Q: What do you consider your greatest accomplishment as a student-athlete?
A: I can name a few highlights in my career, especially when I was playing in U-19. It was my final year, and Sean Wilson, my former doubles partner, and I went to Guatemala. I had reached the finals in both singles and doubles and just lost out in the singles finals to a guy named Timothy Lam from the USA but then we were able to exact revenge in the doubles finals.
Sean and I vs. him and his partner in the doubles finals. It has been quite a while since Jamaica won a gold medal, especially for doubles. That was a really big feat, a really proud moment, cause you know how hard you worked and you came together with someone else and pushed together. I would have liked to have won a singles gold but if I had to choose between singles or doubles I would always choose doubles.
Another big moment is with Gareth. We had a big tournament in Colombia, the CAC games 2018. It was a really good tournament, a really good trip, we were very honed in. We had started our partnership around 2016. I was younger and not as mature as Gareth, not on the same wavelength in terms of how to prepare for a game, how to prepare your mind, how to calm your spirit, how to know and believe in yourself. I learnt a lot from travelling but I also learnt a lot from Gareth.
I think at that tournament, I really stepped up to the plate. We could be on par and he knew that I had his back and could handle the pressure. We were really good at the tournament, really honed in. Eating healthy, taking each day at a time. There was no WiFi in the room and that helped to be totally free from any sort of distraction.
So we just prepared, took one day at a time, just being in the moment. No rushing, not rushing any points. You could see that when we were in the finals against Cuba, we were down about 17-14 in the 3rd set and it was a high-pressure moment. It’s a moment Gareth and I talk about all the time. I told Gareth to smile, it was something we were talking about it the night before. He (Gareth) was saying sometimes he just needs to remember to enjoy the game and just relax and remember he loves this (playing badminton) instead of being so wound-up.
So I told him to smile and you could just see his shoulders relax, and the rest is history. We won that game and were clutch, we came back and I feel that’s one of our greatest victories.
I was traveling, to different countries in Europe and to different countries in the Pan-am region (Mexico, Guatemala, Peru etc.) but still doing school and doing exams and studying. I have to give thanks to the the university I went to, Loughborough, for just enabling me to have that kind of culture for when I’m going away and having things put aside so you can come back.
I have to give thanks to my parents who helped to manage that kind of balancing. Sometimes it’s making things known ahead of time so when I come back I have some kind of a groove to get back to.
I was able to graduate from Loughborough in 2019 December with a bachelors degree in physics with sports science, upper second class honours. It was a really proud moment for me, my parents, my sister and my uncle who came to the graduation.
To know that you can put your mind to something and achieve it. It’s three years and it’s like living in a bubble, in a place where this is your home and you meet new people and different experiences. Knowing you can perform at a high level in the doubles where I am but also come out with degree so you further yourself.
I’m proud of it and will see if I will end up doing a master’s at Loughborough. I’d love to go back. That’s one of my proudest achievement so far.
Q: What is your life and playing philosophy?
A: I think those are two different statements, that are completely intertwined interlinked. My life statement would be “know whatever gift we have is to use to value our relationship with God”, or “the gifts we have are to be used to honour God”.
The best thing I think as humans is that to realize that whatever we have is not from our own selves, whether it is knowledge, whether it is a skill, we learn from someone else. We have that gift from a higher being and so the best way I think to honour God or to honour the gift that we have is to give Him your best. Sometimes it is passed on through people you know, so sometimes if I’m training I would give my coach my best. You have to know how it matches up.
It brings me to the scripture, 1 Corinthians 4:7 which speaks about us receiving gifts from another. That is a really profound scripture for me. So whatever I have whether it’s knowledge, skill, the ability to run, or jump, it’s a gift. The best thing is to do is to go our God by not holding on to the standards for myself or to hold on as if it is mine. Offering it back to Him and saying “here God, this is what you have given me the duty to do and the freedom and I’m grateful and I’m thankful to do this so let me give it back to You in the best way I know”.
So If I go back to the second part where you asked about my playing style, this is where I really appreciated training with Steve Butler, my coach in England. I’ve been training with him full-time since October 2019.
He is a very focused man who never turns up wanting to give anything less than his best. Every day he turns up with intent and purpose. He may not always be 100% intense in terms of workload, but he knows just what to do on specific days, and be able to discern.
Some days it might be really intense, attacking, aggressive training. Another day it may be technical skills or working on a few key switches in the mind, at the end of the day whatever you do just give your best, you know. He is a really wise man, and a lot of the principles and knowledge he has of the sporting world definitely transfer over to my life as a spiritual man.
Some of the things I have learned from him include that ‘something is better than nothing’. Instead of going all or nothing. Instead of saying “hey God I’m gonna limit you and try and fit you into this one hour” kind of being dogmatic about my time but rather saying “hey I’m gonna give you 15min, let me give you this and give my best in this moment and offer that sacrifice”.
That is kind of the philosophy right now as well, you know, especially with all that is happening now. COVID is a part of our reality, with some things not easily accessible. Life is not quite normal and you have to do what you can.
The main thing is always to be intentional, always to have a purpose, always have a goal – not to turn up wandering. That ties in with honouring God which I think is a key thing.
I realized that key principle about January. I was kinda training hard but wasn’t really training thinking this is a way to honour God and further my platform for Him. If there’s anything I can do that will point to Christ, that’s what I should do. Not having a sense of false humility but should always point to Christ in everything I do.
