Jason Rogers is an impressive man. He is 6 feet tall, weighs 185 and looks like a winner. That is probably because he is. He is one sharp guy.
Rogers moved to Brentwood from Houston when he was four and graduated from the Brentwood School in 2001. There he earned a 3.6+ grade-point average. He won the Bank of America Math and Science Award for being the top math and science student during his senior year. But wait, there’s more.
He attended Ohio State University for its fencing program. There, he was a two-time winner of the NCAA sabre bronze medal in 2002 and 2003. And he graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology in 2006. He was also a Rhodes scholarship finalist in 2005. Rogers won the Big Ten Conference Medal of Honor for combined athletics and academic honor among graduating seniors at Ohio State. But that’s not all, either.
Now he has a Silver Medal from the Beijing Olympics that he won September 17. Meeting him is being in the presence of true personal achievement, real greatness. For him, success is overcoming everything else to be the best.
Rogers is probably the Westside’s most eligible bachelor. He is drop-dead handsome with an easy grace about him that comes from having confidence in one’s abilities.
His fencing story began at the Los Angeles International Fencing Center where he trained with Daniel Costin when he was 10. He started with foils, but within six months, he had fallen in love with the sabre. He was the youngest American man ever to achieve an “A†rating at his sport at the age of 14 in 1997.
Rogers competed in back-to-back Olympics. But last time, in Athens, his team finished fourth.
After Athens, frustrated and disappointed, Rogers felt he needed a new dimension in his training. It took a lot of courage. That is when he came to Darlene Conte of Body by Pilates at the Brentwood Village. Conte agreed to co-sponsor his training.
“It was a total paradigm shift,†Rogers said. “I woke up the next day and I knew I was working muscles I had never worked.â€
“Elite athletes can feel everything. Every day is completely different from the day before. You are training at the highest level,†said Conte. “He made me a better trainer. He raised the bar.â€
“Within 6 months we had won the bronze at the Pan American games,†Rogers said. “I felt leaner and more flexible.â€
Rogers stuck with the training for a year and then headed to HQ in New York to prepare for the 2008 games. We caught up with him when he returned home to visit with Conte after Beijing.
“It was the most emotional moment,†he said of his Beijing victory. “Especially after we lost by one point to Russia. We had expended so much emotional energy that our reservoir was spent. It was surreal.â€
The future is up in the air. For now, he hasn’t had time to break from training for such things as dating. He would like to continue fencing. It is hard to get funding and there are no pro leagues. “If I can finance the venture, I will do it. Or I will advance a career in another direction,†Rogers said.
www.bodybypilates.us
http://fencing.teamusa.org/athlete/athlete/526
