Mathieu Torrijos

The Morning Work

The first-year player has learned how confidence gets built before anyone hands out an award.

Mathieu Torrijos remembers questioning whether he could compete at the high school level. A year later, in Grade 10, he was named his team’s MVP.

Between those moments were summer mornings at the YMCA.

He kept going to get better. The award mattered because it confirmed something the work had begun to tell him: he belonged at that level.

The most useful part of the memory may be the gap between those two versions of himself. One was uncertain whether he could compete. The other had been recognized as the team’s most valuable player. The summer mornings connected them. He had not been handed confidence first and instructed to work afterward; the work helped make confidence believable.

Entering university basketball, Mathieu has another unfamiliar level in front of him. He knows preparation can change how that unfamiliarity feels. Learning the pace and expectations will take time, but he has a previous example of what repeated effort can do with doubt.

Basketball had started with his dad and a mini hoop in the garage. Mathieu liked that he could play throughout the year. By Grade 6, he had joined a team and begun prioritizing the sport over hockey and baseball.

Now entering his first year of eligibility with St. Mary’s, he has another level to learn. His immediate goals are to understand post-secondary basketball, sharpen his skills, and prepare for opportunities rather than assume they’ll arrive on his schedule.

His main competitor, as he sees it, is the person he was yesterday. Discipline and consistency help him keep that comparison useful.

Outside basketball, Mathieu keeps a journal. He writes to organize thoughts, look ahead, and leave himself reminders. It’s another form of preparation: a place to put the mental traffic before it all tries to merge at once.

The habit suits his emphasis on competing with himself. Writing gives his thoughts somewhere to go before they become comparisons with everyone around him. It lets him consider what he wants to do next and what he needs to remember, on his own terms.

His future goal is to play happily, freely, and confidently. That is an athletic ambition as much as a personal one. He wants the effort to lead to a game he can enjoy playing, alongside good grades and relationships that leave him feeling grounded. The university experience should have room for all three.

Time outdoors with friends gives him a reset. He wants a life where basketball, academics, and relationships can all go well, and where he can play freely and confidently.

“Run my own race,” he says, describing the advice he wishes he’d heard earlier.

When his collegiate career is over, he hopes coaches and teammates remember humility, coachability, and someone who helped them win.

The Grade 10 award remains a good memory. Those YMCA mornings explain why. Mathieu knows the next stage will require more of them, in whatever form the work takes now.