Mattress Firm Student Athlete of the Week: Florence-Carlton’s Justin Hergett

Florence-Carlton senior Justin Hergett is not your normal 18 year-old boy. He has already graduated high school and is on the cusp of a career as a professional figure skater. He’s been skating ever since he can remember, but one moment in the stands changed everything. “By the time I really fell in love with it was two years ago which seems like not very long ago. But I watched Cirque Du Soleil show on ice and it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen and I just felt so amazing walking out seeing that and I didn’t know my sport had the power of doing that to somebody,” Justin Hergett said. “This is what I want to do. I want to make somebody feel this way. So I’m going to get into this, I’m going to get a job and I’m going to make everybody happy.” “I don’t really know how he fell in love with it, but it became part of his DNA because when he’s not on the ice, he’s not that much fun to be around,” Justin’s mother Pam Hergett said jokingly. The dream for Justin has not always been an easy one. Hergett skated in both ice hockey uniforms and figure skating costumes growing up, an uncommon sight especially for a boy. The pressures to conform, Hergett says, almost drove him to give up skating entirely. But Hergett persisted, thanks to the support from an accepting community of coaches and fellow skaters. “School was such a hard thing to get through. I had a ton of people telling me I was wrong. That I wasn’t playing basketball so I wasn’t a stereotypical guy. I got called gay all the time,” he said. “That’s what really kind of drove me to quit. I don’t know if it was worth it to stick with this sport anymore. But what saved me was some really good coaches, coaches that brought me out here and helped me develop my own skating. It’s a family here and the family really kinda got me through realizing it was okay to be a figure skater as a guy.” Now a national showcase champion skater, Hergett wants to give back to the community that helped him through tough times. He’s on the ice every week, helping the next generation of skaters to find their stride. “There’s definitely a legacy standpoint, where you’re like ‘I skate a certain way and people like the way I skate.’ So if I can pass on the way I skate to a younger generation, more people are going to like it,” Hergett said. “It’s nice to see them grow into their own. It’s very rewarding to see someone go out onto the ice and do their own performance and know that it’s not you showing through as their coach, it’s them doing their own performance and loving every second of it.” Hergett plans to sign on professionally with Disney On Ice and could tour as soon as this year where he hopes to continues his legacy of acceptance, and maybe a couple of back flips.