Swimming to the Top: Keanu Haghighi

It would take more than an injury to prevent Keanu Haghighi from pursuing his passion in sports. Raised in a hardcore tennis-playing family, Haghighi had planned to play professional tennis, following after the footsteps of his cousins that ranked first in the Northern California USTA. However, an injury during his junior year of high school put a halt to those dreams.

In response to the temporary pause on his sports career, Haghighi said that “it sucked not being able to play anymore but…things happen in life, and so you have to, you can’t just like mope around and do nothing with your life, so I decided to go to the next best avenue.”

Haghighi’s intense love for sports shone through in his journalism studies during his undergraduate years at San Jose State University. After further exploring the field through his unforgettable internships at NBC and CNN, Haghighi left the comfort zones of his home on the West Coast to make his dreams into a reality. He wants to become a small fish in the big markets and is at Newhouse at Syracuse to discover his niche and follow his calling.

Interview Transcript:

S: Hi, can you please state your name and spell it?

K: Keanu Haghighi, K-e-a-n-u, last name is H-a-g-h-i-g-h-i.

S: Beautiful. So, my first question is where are you from?

K: I’m from San Jose, California, from the Bay Area.

S: So why Syracuse?

K: So I applied to a couple of journalism schools for graduate school and I got into Berkeley. I also got into Syracuse and so I visited Berkeley and I was like oh this school’s kind of outdated and I also wanted to get out of my comfort zone and Newhouse is obviously one of the best broadcasting schools in the nation. So I decided at 23 years old, it’s finally time to get out of California, get out of my comfort zone and you know, it’s for a good cause. It’s a great school so, packed up the bags and went to central New York.

S: How do you like it so far?

K: It’s cool. It’s much different than California, There’s no In-N-Out which sucks. No, it’s cool, the lingo’s different, but I can see myself getting used to it pretty fast.

S: Yeah? So why sports journalism?

K: So originally, I wanted to become a professional tennis player. My mom’s whole side of the family plays tennis. And so like my cousins were ranked #1 in northern California USTA, so growing up I played a lot of tennis. Was good enough my junior year to get interest from schools, uh Berkeley, ucla, a lot of the UC schools, and then, like a lot of PAC 12 schools. And so I wanted to go to Berkeley because like my whole mom’s side of the family went to Berkeley, and I thought it would be perfect, they all played tennis, they all went to Berkeley, and unfortunately I got injured, I hurt my knee, and so, that was my junior year, so I got like verbal interest, like verbal offers, but nothing on paper. So my senior year I had the chance to play for it but my knee was never the same really like on the court, I didn’t rehab it long enough so, didn’t happen so I ended up going to San Jose state and I said if I can’t be a professional athlete, I’ll do the next best thing, you know, cover them, so I ended up choosing journalism. And I’ve always wanted to do it from a young age. I’ve always loved watching ESPN and all that stuff,

S: So I think if you’re growing up with this dream of being a professional athlete, how did it feel junior year when you realized that you would never be able to fully achieve that?

K: I mean it was sad because like so many hours of training like, I went to school and right after school you drive to a clinic, drive to practice and enter so many tournaments. My parents would drive me to Santa Cruz, they drive me to Los Angeles, you know, played a couple tournaments across the states you know like New York, Florida, we went to a lot of places and so it sucked not being able to play anymore but I was, you know, things happen in life, and so you have to, you can’t just like mope around and do nothing with your life, so I decided to go to the next best avenue. I liked writing, I was always into writing, journalism in general, and so I just pursued it in my undergrad and just went through with it.

S: And then where do you see yourself in four years?

K: Um, I hope to like Stomski said, be a smaller fish in a big market because in the end I want to work my way up. Working in like the ESPN, the Fox sports. I’m still using Newhouse to figure out whether I want to do like production. I know for the longest time I wanted to be on air, but after I’ve had like internships at like CNN, NBC Sports, I got to see what goes into creating these shows so I got really interested into production and so I guess I’m going to take a wide variety of classes here and find my niche, find what I’m good at, and stick to it. And so, I’m excited to see what happens.

S: Beautiful, well thank you so much for your time, Keanu.