Humans of Blair: The breakdancing track star with a sword

Kaan Jin

Photo: Kaan Gin

Kaan Gin Photo courtesy of Sadie Blain.

“You never know…you just might find that thing that makes you whole.”

Junior Kaan Gin has many hobbies. Not five, not six, but seven whole hobbies that he somehow squeezes between all of his schoolwork and responsibilities. The list goes, in chronological order, fencing, cross country, rowing, lifting, breakdancing, tricking, and boxing. 

Gin picked up fencing in the sixth grade because he thought it was “cool,” and has stuck with it ever since. Then, after becoming a master of the foil, Gin started cross country in ninth grade and promptly found out that he was not very good at running. “When I started as a freshman, I was absolutely terrible…like second to last in the largest race of the entire season,” Gin admits. 

Nevertheless, with time and patience, Gin started to improve his time. This year, he has made it onto the varsity team. The distance that used to take him 32 minutes to run now takes him 18 minutes. 

It was difficult in the beginning, but Gin is forever grateful that he never threw in the towel. “I think [cross country] is probably the hobby that's closest to my heart right now, because…[of] that transition from being terrible to being decent,” he says.

As a matter of fact, many of Gin’s hobbies actually stem from cross country as he picked up many of them to stay in shape during the offseason. Lifting, rowing, and boxing were all sports that Gin gradually started to fall in love with during his time away from the track. 

However, the story of how Gin started breakdancing is a little bit more complicated—it came to him in a dream. “It was just a normal day, I was going to sleep and doing normal things, [but] then I had a dream where I was just doing…the windmill,” he explains. 

The funny thing is that although Gin often has dreams where he is doing the windmill, he is still unable to perform the move in real life to this day. Though that is the cause of much distress for Gin, he still perseveres because he would hate to leave things unfinished. As Gin always says, “trust the process!”