Until a few years ago, senior Feranmi Okanlami had no idea he could be the captain of Stanford track and field. Okanlami claims to have been unathletic until the third grade, and he didn’t even start the triple jump until sophomore year of high school.

“My parents did not want me to play sports.” Okanlami said. “We’re from a traditional Nigerian family, where academics come before anything else.”

Sure enough, Okanlami attended boarding school in Indiana from when he was 13 until he moved to Stanford to continue his education. In high school, he played lacrosse and golf, sang in the chorus, danced, acted and played percussion.

After seeing him dunk, though, Okanlami’s best friend encouraged the high-school sophomore to join the track and field team and compete in the long jump, triple jump and high jump. The rest, as they say, is history.

Okanlami has disciplined himself enough to be a team leader on the field and inside the classroom. With a place in the Stanford record books for both the indoor and outdoor triple jump, he seems poised to continue his success.

“I plan on breaking the record this year,” Okanlami said.

But the Cardinal senior’s ambitions run deeper than athletics. Growing up with two doctors as parents, Feranmi discovered an emotional side to the profession, which he’s cultivated as a major in Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities for pre-meds.

“I want to be a great physician so that I can see the human side,” said Okanlami, who will be writing an honors thesis this spring on medical narratives.

Having taken medical ethics and philosophy classes, Okanlami felt prepared to apply for medical school this year as a well-rounded candidate. And he was successful: Okanlami plans to attend either Yale University School of Medicine or University of Michigan Medical School.

Professional ambitions aside, Okanlami recognizes the importance of track.

“It is part of who I am,” he said. “Other people have their specialties; this is just something I do. I run.”

Rather than being recruited like other athletes, Okanlami came to visit Stanford on his own initiative and talked to head coach Edrick Floreal about how to balance academic and athletic responsibilities.

“Coach convinced me that I would be a student-athlete, not an athlete-student,” Okanlami said. “The coaches respect that the players here are here to get a degree.”

Despite these assurances, Okanlami has had to work hard to balance out sports and academics.

“You can’t do everything and expect to do everything well,” he said. “Some sacrifices may seem hard, but if you want to be the best you can be, you have to make those sacrifices.”

Indeed, track has changed Okanlami as a person.

“Hopefully, I’ve matured,” he said. “Besides that, I appreciate aspects of other peoples’ lives. If people are purely academics, I respect that because I know that’s a different sort of time commitment; and if people concentrate on academics and sports, I respect that because it takes discipline. That’s what I love about Stanford: The competition level is high on all levels, but nobody shows off about it.”

Okanlami’s own moment of glory came when he missed the World Junior Championships by one spot. He has been motivated to compete at a different level ever since.

“It takes victories to make you realize you are worthy,” Okanlami said.

Hopefully, the two-time captain and future pediatric/fetal surgeon realizes he’s worthy just as he is.