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U.S. rugby sevens’ anomaly Perry Baker is the one and only athlete to have his name listed in the World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year book twice.
But, looking back to 2011 when he was drafted to the National Football League’s (NFL) Philadelphia Eagles, no one could have foreseen that coming.
Fast forward to 2013, when Baker was sleeping in his truck and working as a pest control employee, the reality of today still seemed like an impossible feat.
Jump ahead one more time to today, and the same man is gearing up for his third Olympic Games as a father of three who intends to land himself and his flag on top of the podium at Paris 2024.
Olympics.com sat down with Baker in New York just months ahead of the start of the Games and he declared that “the job isn’t finished.”
Baker will take to the Olympic stage for what will likely be the last time with the mantra: “Don't stop until the whistle’s blown. Don't think that it's ever over. Because it's not.”
As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024
Rugby athlete Perry Baker speaks to the media at the Team USA Media Summit at Marriott Marquis Hotel on April 15, 2024 in New York City.
Walking into the New York City interview decked out in Team USA gear with a rugby ball in hand and a smile on his face, Baker’s demeanor was hardly suggestive of the tumultuous road he’s walked for his 37 years of life.
In 2011 he was drafted to the Eagles and years of financial comfort appeared to be within his grasp until a knee injury changed the trajectory of his life.
He was released from the team, underwent a suboptimal two years in the indoor Arena Football League and eventually decided to make the shift to an entirely new sport.
His introduction to rugby was rocky, to say the least.
He packed up in Pittsburg and moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he lived between his truck and the rarely-available couch in the apartment that “probably 12” of his teammates already lived in, as he recalled in a 2021 interview with Olympics.com.
The lows he was experiencing even went as far as borrowing his mother’s $100 electricity fund at a tournament in Las Vegas, just so he could afford to eat.
Scraping by didn’t last long for Baker, though, as he quickly began to find his footing.
Between the grit, speed and raw athletic talent he put on display as he made his way in the sport, it seemed as though he checked every box for Team USA as they began to put together a team for the Olympic debut of rugby sevens.
Ahead of Rio 2016, Baker received a call and was offered a contract at the U.S. Olympic Training Facility, with the opportunity to represent the United States in Rio.
Picking up the phone while on-site at his pest control job, he “just started bawling.”
From there, he took off.
In 2017 and 2018, he was awarded with back-to-back World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year honors and, to this day, he remains the only athlete on that list twice.
Perry Baker of the USA runs in for a try during the 2024 Perth SVNS men's 7th Place Play-Off match between USA and Spain at HBF Park on January 28, 2024 in Perth, Australia.
Reflecting on the pivotal moment that came from the devastating injury that took him out of the NFL, Baker said: “There is something that stuck with me really hard after I bounced back from injury. And it was: you can only control two things, and that's your attitude and effort.
“It's how you look at it, and then what you're going to do about it and that right there will get you through.”
And through it, he got, but the humility was never lost.
“Every time I go to Las Vegas with USA Rugby now, and this is God's honest truth, I splurge every single time. No matter who I’m with. My parents, wife, and kids come to Vegas now and I take them out. And I always tell them this story that the first time I went there, I didn’t have a dime in my pocket,” he said in 2021.
After a disappointingly early exit from Rio 2016, Team USA came so close to avenging their loss in Tokyo with an early lead in the quarter-finals but eventually succumbed to Great Britain 26-21.
In Paris, everything will be different; fans will return to stadiums after a quiet Games were disrupted by the pandemic.
“It’s so crazy, not having fans in [Tokyo] because we blew [that] lead,” he told Olympics.com
“I just feel like [if] we had fans there to have them behind us, we would have finished that one. It means everything and I like to soak it in…I just feel like it definitely is a push having those fans there,” he said.
At 37 years old, Paris might just be Baker’s last shot at Olympic glory and, like he said, “the job isn’t finished.”
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