Osawese Agbonkonkon knows it’s the uniform that gets people’s attention first.
At the University of Texas, he is a high jumper for one of the nation’s top track and field powerhouses. He is tall, fast, and explosive, the kind of athlete coaches noticed before he fully saw the path for himself. But the more interesting part of Agbonkonkon’s story is not only how high he can jump but also how high his potential is.
Track was not the original plan. Soccer was his first love. Basketball came next. As a freshman in high school, he was already dunking, which made him hard to ignore. And even though the track coach kept asking him to come out, Agbonkonkon kept saying no. However, eventually, in his junior year, he said yes.
“I came out for that first practice, and it’s been only up from there… pun intended.”
The phrase — which he said with a sly grin — fits.
At his first high school meet, Agbonkonkon was placed in the junior varsity section, and he jumped high enough to win both the JV and Varsity competitions. By the summer, he had finished third at the AAU Junior Olympics and earned his first All-American honor, and in his first indoor season as a senior, he finished ranked No. 3 in the country.
“That was when I kind of figured that going to college for this was going to become the goal,” he said.
Now, at Texas, he is still measuring that distance.
He describes the high jump plainly: “I run a curve at a bar, try to plant my foot and clear a crossbar.” But the event requires more than a gift for jumping. It asks for timing, trust, repetition, and the ability to throw your body toward something that will fall the moment you are wrong.
A simple enough explanation, but symbolic in how he approaches life.
“You attack everything you do,” Agbonkonkon said of life as a student-athlete. “Whether that’s attacking practice on the track, whether that’s attacking meets, you have assignments, class, trying to get that done as quickly as possible.”
Agbonkonkon is studying economics with minors in history and English. And law school may be next. He’s willing to admit that the corporate world is somewhere in the picture.
But before that, there is a career professionally in track and field.
“I want to kind of put the country on notice that I’m here,” he said. But Agbonkonkon is not only interested in being seen as an athlete.
For most, just getting up on time for classes would be enough. However, Agbonkonkon is also a writer. Sci-fi, specifically. His book, Psychic Suit, follows a group of characters called Psychics, people whose powers come from an alien metal that crashed to Earth as a meteor. It’s a story that’s ready-made for the Hollywood screen, but underneath the genre, Agbonkonkon is wrestling with something real.
“The biggest message readers should walk away with is who has power, what are they doing with it, and how is that interacting with our world for the better or for the worse,” he said.
In the NIL era, Agbonkonkon understands that lesson even more. He sees athletes building brands through clothing, coffee, advertisements and collectives. His offering is different: a student-athlete with a sci-fi universe, a pitch deck, a TV Bible and ambitions that extend beyond the approach.
“How many athletes are walking around with a sci-fi book dealing with all these big real-world themes?” he said.
That is the fuller portrait. Agbonkonko, a first-generation Nigerian American from Dallas, grew up constantly reading. Sometimes, checking out more books than the school rules technically allowed because librarians knew he would bring them back. He traces some of that love to his mother, who was always a reader, and to sitting in the room while she taught his older sister how to read.
Now, he is trying to make room for all of it. In his words, “I see myself as a professional track athlete who’s also a relatively big-time sci-fi author, who’s also an executive producer on a TV show based off this book that he wrote.”
It sounds like a lot because it is. But Agbonkonkon does not describe it like a fantasy. He describes it like a plan.
For now, the high jump bar is still in front of him. So is everything else.