Hi

Hello.  My name is Thomas Troy on the official roll, but I go by my middle name, Jake.  I was born in Boise, Idaho on October 20, 1990.  I am a junior student here at Weber State pursuing a degree in communications with an electronic media emphasis.

Before I was 1 year old my family moved to Ogden, Utah and that's where I remained until after high school.  I attended St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary kindergarten until 8th grade.  I then opted out of enrolling in St. Joseph’s High School to attend Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City.  

Growing up I played many sports but was best at soccer.  I played club soccer for La Roca FC and the U-17 and U-18 Real Salt Lake development academy squads.  I was recruited during many senior year of high school to play soccer in Los Angeles for California State University Northridge.  I played for the division 1 Big West school for 3 years.  I also played on the U-20 LA Galaxy development team during my sophomore year.  

Unfortunately, I had been suffering from a small fracture in my femur for over two years during my time at Northridge.  My pain and symptoms were misdiagnosed by University trainers and medical staff in my multiple efforts to resolve the discomfort.  Finally, I saw my own surgeon in Utah who concluded the pain and my subsequent skewed gait was from a small fracture of my femur at the knee which had grown much worse than necessary due to the misdiagnosis.  I underwent surgery to screw the fracture together via two titanium screws.  Nearly a year after my surgery I developed a new pain at the same surgery site and went to the doctor to discover a complication caused the fracture to heal improperly.  I was left with no options except to artificially re-fracture my femur in order to allow it to heal all over again, hopefully in a stronger fashion.  Ever since these two surgeries I’ve been forced to avoid running and subsequently ended my soccer career. Now I'm at Weber to finish my degree. Thankfully, my other primary passions are freeride/downhill mountain biking and whitewater kayaking, both of which are very low impact with regard to my femur.

If all goes as planned I’ll be done with school at the end of this school year.  After that I’d like to move to central California or Oregon because those are two beautiful areas and I really just hate the snow and it’d be nice to be somewhere I can bike and kayak year-round.  

The attached picture is me with my two older sisters. One is nearly done with medical school and the other works at the Nike world headquarters in Portland, Oregon.