Every two weeks, the Patriot will randomly pick a student from the directory, find out more about his or her life, and prove that every student has a story.

The sun is high over his head, beating down on his face. He looks up at the sky. It seems to be just within his reach, as if he could raise his hands and capture some of the sun rays.

He takes one final deep breath, then jumps from a two story high building.

Although this may seem like a scene from an action movie it isn’t. It is instead  another day in the life of junior Connor DiDay. Throughout the years, DiDay has partaken in various hobbies ranging from parkour to tricking to gloving and poi.

Starting at eight years old, Diday started parkour by jumping off his deck. “Eventually, I started jumping off buildings too,” Diday said. “Once, I even jumped from two stories high. I’ve never been in the hospital though.”

“Parkour is hard to explain. There’s vaults, wall running, wall flips, high building jumps, monkeying, swing through, precision jumping… there is so much,” Diday said. “It’s the feeling of being free. I like being able to move fast. It’s a way to get out of the constraints of the real world.”

His interest in parkour eventually expanded to tricking, which is a combination of martial arts, gymnastics, and capoeira also known as Brazilian dance fighting.

“Brazilian slaves were not allowed to practice martial arts so they masked their fighting with dance moves,” Diday said.

Now, Diday is even training to compete in one of the Ninja Warrior Sasuke Tournaments at Alternate Routes, which is the first gym in Maryland dedicated to parkour, free running, and tricking training.

“It’s a test of strength really, a lot of dedication and hard work,” Diday said. “Right now, I’m mostly working on my flexibility. I haven’t really worked on my upper body yet.”

This past summer, Diday also became interested in gloving to electric dance music and poi, which is more commonly known as glow sticking. Gloving involves hand motions while wearing gloves that have glow in the dark fingertips. Therefore, when in a dark environment, it would seem to the audience as if colorful circles of light were suspended in the air, orbiting each other and spinning in different patterns. Glow sticking involves the same concept except instead of balls of the light, one would see the actual glow stick moving throughout the air.

By watching videos on YouTube, Diday learned the techniques of gloving and glow sticking then eventually made routines that he now performs for his friends.

“A lot of my hobbies are things not a lot of people know about,” Diday said. “I like having a lot of different hobbies that people are amazed with. I love entertaining people and putting them into shock and awe.”

Through Diday’s hobbies, he has also made many new friends.

“The community I met from all this is one I love,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for better friends.”

Sydney Setree is a Managing Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.