Today we’d like to introduce you to Guy East.
Guy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
At the age of 12, I started riding a bike to cope with being bullied at school. I began to improve and soon started racing and became one of the best young cyclists in the nation. I saw Lance Armstrong win his first Tour de France in 1999 and knew that I wanted to be a professional cyclist and compete at that level. I became so dedicated and focused on being the best athlete I could be, that nothing else mattered. At the age of 17, I was invited to compete on the US National team and traveled to Europe for the first time. I raced on the national team until I was 21. At that time, Lance Armstrong was making a comeback to the sport and wanted to help the next generation of cyclists take his place.
He created a team of the ten best young cyclists in the world, and I was one of them. We had the privilege to train and race with Lance and it was a dream come true but while my dream was starting to come true, it was also the year that year everything changed. While on that team, we were competing in Mexico City, staying in a 5-star hotel and front of the hotel were homeless families sleeping on the street, living on nothing, eating whatever they could find and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. At that moment, it hit me that my career and dream of being a professional athlete was potentially meaningless. I realized that all the trophies I had won were collecting dust on my bookshelf at home and that none of my accomplishments on the bike were going to make the world a better place. I realized that I wanted to be known for more than an athlete. After much deliberation, I decided to quit my career, sell everything I owned and start serving the poor. At first, I lived in homeless shelters in Indiana, later I traveled throughout Central America serving with non-profit organizations and trying to make a difference any way I could. After about two years of doing this, I realized that I wanted to compete again and that I could use my career to make the world a better place but I wanted to take a different approach than I had in the past.
I ended up in Tijuana, Mexico where I started building homes for the poor and split my time training as a professional cyclist. Ultimately, I decided that as much as I wanted to help the poor in Mexico, I wanted to help other athletes that were struggling with lack of meaning in their life and I started inviting groups of elite athletes to Mexico so they could experience the joy of giving by building homes for families in need.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Every day is full of new challenges and struggles. For a while, it was the fear of failure, of losing everything I worked so hard for, through injury, or simply not being good enough. The life of a professional athlete is incredibly challenging because your identity is built around your sport and how you perform on the field. When you win, everything is great, but when you lose, it’s like you’ve lost your sense of validation and you’re no longer worthy. As a culture, we focus so much on sports. As parents we want our kids to get into the sport to learn character and earn a college scholarship but what happens more often than not, is that children begin to believe that their parents and coaches only love them when they win. A child feeds on the approval of their parents and coaches, but when they’re only receiving love and validation when they perform well it sends mixed signals to children. One of my biggest challenges has been to overcome the “performance-identity” cultivated in sport by my coaches. I never felt like I was good enough because no one, aside from my parents, ever told me that I was. Those are very deep wounds to heal from, created by an unhealthy culture of competitive sport. There have been other challenges around forming a new organization. The issues that we try to solve as an organization are so deeply rooted in our culture that while many people resonate, most don’t understand our work. But we continue to press on and hope that we can continue to make a difference, one person at a time.
Please tell us about your organization.
Hope Sports is the organization I started to solve the problems that I wanted to change in competitive sports. Most athletes are so focused on improving their on-field performance that they neglect their personal development that helps them become a success when their careers are over. We help athletes prepare for life after sport by giving them training and opportunities outside their comfort zone. Our most popular program is taking athletes to Mexico to build homes for the poor.
The IMG Academy is one of the most prestigious high schools in the country. A student on a recent trip wrote this. “In my last tournament, I did not have the greatest result and have learned to cope with failure by presenting myself the countless things I am appreciative of. Even during the tournament, I was happier than I ever was due to my amazing trip with Hope Sports. I look back on this experience through the notes I have taken and realize I have done a great deed. You have helped me gain a new purpose in life itself.”
Over the past five years, we’ve hosted 1000 professional and D1 college athletes to build 50 homes for the poor. We’ve hosted nine Olympic teams, USC, USD, Baylor, Wheaton College and other schools to provide life changing experiences for their sports teams.
As a result of my work with Hope Sports, I’ve started representing athletes as an agent to offer a holistic approach to athlete representation. As well as creating partnerships with brands, we focus on developing other areas of their lives so they’re more marketable and prepared for life after sport.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
My parents, my wife Andrea, my brothers and sisters. I have an amazing team of people that have helped sustain, encourage and challenge me to new heights.
Pricing:
- $1290/person for a trip with Hope Sports (dates available on website)
Contact Info:
- Website: hopesports.org
- Phone: 619-736-7306
- Email: info@hopesports.org
- Instagram: @hopesports
- Facebook: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=facebook+hope+sports&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
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