Poised and ready, Sumantra Banerjee (12) executes multiple taekwondo moves with a focused look in his eyes. His movements come off as lasers, unpredictable yet laser-focused on the target.

Sumantra’s longest extracurricular is taekwondo, as he has been pursuing it for eleven years. Although this may seem like a long time, his perseverance has paid off, as he is a first-degree black belt.

Sumantra credits taekwondo for his ability to persevere through difficult situations. He recalls the challenge of being able to perform many complex techniques so that he could ascend to one of the most coveted positions in taekwondo. This perseverance has helped him throughout his high school career, and he remembers the effect it had on the first few math classes in high school.

“I would say my first few math classes in high school definitely took a lot of hard work and perseverance. It was very hard at first but that was where I learned the value of doing more than the minimum,” he said.

Along with taekwondo, Sumantra also enjoys coding, and is part of a student-run organization called Stemcoder. He has grown to love computer science, and uses often uses it as a tool to learn about other interesting topics.

The activities Sumantra participates in cause his schedule to grow quite full, but he still manages to find time for rest and relaxation. He is an avid soccer fan, and follows clubs all over the world. One of his favorite hobbies is to apply statistics to learn about the proficiency of individual players.

“I’m a big soccer fan and I love watching soccer games, and I like using stats for this player or this player and learning about them,” Sumantra said.

Sumantra remained modest about his soccer knowledge, but his friend Cameron Jones (12) thinks that he is quite knowledgeable about the sport.

“When the World Cup came around, Sumantro is pretty avid soccer fan,” Cameron said. “It’s kind of funny, because he was the go-to guy to talk to, to ask about what was going on in the World Cup because many of us weren’t as familiar with it as he was.”

Despite the wide range of activities that Sumantra participates in, one hobby links them all together: teaching. He was first introduced to it when he received his black belt, as one of his duties was to teach other people who were eager to learn taekwondo. Although he admits that he did not think much about the prospect of teaching before receiving his black belt, he immediately fell in love with the idea of helping others.

“In my experiences, not just in the classroom, but also teaching other students, I’ve learned that you can learn a lot of things like empathy, and that’s helped me build stronger relationships with people, including my teachers, because when I teach my students they know that they’re learning from someone who’s been through it before. When I tell them about my personal experiences, I know that that can be really helpful,” he said.

Even while at school, Cameron noticed that Sumantra tried to help his friends whenever possible.

“He’s always been there to help me and other friends and he’s very good with that kind of thinking,” Cameron said.

Furthermore, Sumantro credits his academic teaching style to his Japanese and computer science teachers at Harker along with his taekwondo master.

“For taekwondo, my master was very influential. And of course my Japanese and my Computer Science teachers were my reference points for my teaching style,” he said.