By: Isaac Daniels
See how Tony Jenzen went from playing pickup soccer to playing professional football. On July 13, 2016 Write on Sports interviewed an American footballer by the name of Tony Janzen at the Goshen college.
Tony Janzen said that he was privileged, and had many opportunities to play Football throughout his youth. At a young age he played travel football on the Elkhart Flames, as his school, Pierre Moran, had no football team. In high school he played on the school team at Elkhart Central. He was very happy to finally play on a school team.
Tony Jenzen also played for Goshen College, where he took them to nationals. He and his team won a total of 55 games whilst he was playing. When asked why he chose Goshen College he responded with, “Well the easy answer is, my Dad worked at Goshen, which covered some of the intuition.” He also said that he liked that it was a Mennonite College, and overall felt it a very welcoming place.
Goshen College required that you do some sort of service work, and Mr. Jenzen chose to do his in the Dominican Republic. He found that he really liked doing these trips, and later chose to go to Cambodia. He was sharing a job with his wife, and also played on an amateur football team. His team was given a chance to play against a professional Cambodian team, in which Jenzen scored a goal. Afterwords, Jenzen was asked if he wanted to join the professional team, in which he also accepted. His team’s goal was to make it 10th place or above (out of 12 teams) because if they didn’t the team would be relegated. They ended up getting 9th place, which pleased Jenzen and the team both very much.
Jenzen is a very humble man, who worked a full time job, all while playing professional football. He was not paid while playing, but they did pay for his shoes. Jenzen went from playing pickup soccer to playing for a professional Cambodian football team.