Meet Steven Servius!
Steven, class of 2015, is from Stuart, Florida. He is known on campus as that Christian football player who has tons of swag. You can usually spot him reading his Bible, which could explain why he is a Religion major.
People know you as both that Christian guy and that football player. Is there one you identify more with and if so, which one?
Umm..Probably that Christian guy. It’s always been kind of a “where do you fit in most” type of thing. I’m a part of the team but I’m kind of the one that sticks out. A few of my friends have called me the outlier. I’m a very strong part of the team and I have a connection with them but at the same time, I don’t participate in most of the things they do, like the parties and the hookup culture that exists behind sports. Those kind of things have me sticking out just a little bit and have me identify myself as more of the Christian guy.
Was your transition to Williams difficult since we are a secular campus?
It was a very tough transition because I had only been a Christian for a year. I was saved summer of 2010, which was the summer going into my senior year of high school. And from that second half of summer and all of my senior year of high school I was just in this Christian bubble, surrounded by only Christian friends at that point, completely isolated from everyone else at my school unless they were Christian. Going from that and coming straight here to a super liberal area was completely different from South Florida, where most people go to church. It was a pretty hard transition. And, I’d also add that the other hard part was the fact that I now had to live with my peers whereas in high school if there was something going on that I wasn’t comfortable with I could easily avoid it.
Do you feel that this transition has gotten better?
Yeah it has. My biggest problem was just learning how to deal with other people who didn’t share my beliefs. It took failing at doing that all through freshman year for me to learn from my mistakes and learn to be more loving and more accepting. And the following years I just learned to be comfortable with my own faith, who I am, not afraid to just be who I am around people who might disagree, who might want to spark a debate about it but at the same time not try to lunge out at everyone else who doesn’t agree with me. So I’ve learned to be who I am and if someone has a problem with it let them have a problem with it but me personally not have a problem with them not sharing my beliefs.
How old were you when you started playing football?
I come from a Haitian family and I didn’t even know what football was until 7th grade. And I was also obese most of my childhood so I couldn’t play football until high school because they had for the city-leagues weight limits for it and I was about 100 pounds over the weight limit. So I started losing the weight and I was finally able to play in high school.
You must have really liked football since it motivated you to go through so much work to get the chance to play. Are your feelings for the sport as strong now as they were then?
Yeah. However, this has been a tough year personally, getting back into the swing of football-I took the year off from football last year because I was recovering from surgery. I still love it and if I didn’t I wouldn’t be out there. But definitely, the fire is still there.
What do you hope to do post-Williams and is football a part of that?
It’s going to be a tough transition because football won’t be a part of my life after Williams. The main two things of my identity have been that Christian guy or the football player. Post-Williams it’s just going to be that Christian guy. And, what I’m looking to do after Williams is hopefully go to seminary and either become a pastor or a missionary and go to a foreign place that hasn’t heard the Gospel and share it.
Speaking of foreign places, will you be going abroad next semester?
Everyone has gotten on me about it but I decided to study away at the University of South Florida for a few reasons. The first one being that when I made the decision it was during Winter Study (January term) and I was super cold, I remember it was in the negatives, and I just wanted to be home. I also had some health problems at the time because I was still recovering from surgery and I was skeptical about leaving the country. And on top of that I just wanted to be home. So I’ll be going to the University of South Florida to just experience college life as a regular student at a non-intensive academic school and just be a number. And let myself be lost in a crowd of 38-48,000 people.
What is your favorite thing about Williams?
What I really like about Williams is that there’s that tradition of excellence. That has always been something I loved: to be part of something excellent and continue with that. When I came to visit, the football team was undefeated, they had just gotten NESCAC champions and academically we’re also #1 in the country according to Forbes. We also won the Director’s Cup , which goes to the best athletic program across the 3 divisions. The school was great in both athletics and academics. Football has had some rough years recently, but even then I can look at another one of our teams, like soccer or tennis and I can say that they’re representing Williams and I can be proud of my school.
What would you change about Williams?
This might be coming from a young and dumb perspective, or the current culture that we’re in, but one thing that I would change would be the stress that we have to always just be about academic prestige. Williams has always been known for its great academics but I feel like that shouldn’t just be it. I mean for me, I think we put such a strain in trying to make things like athletics not look as flashy but I say the heck of it-Williams, we dominate. Academically, everyone knows who we are, we’re at the top of the list, and I say when they see us in the field or court or wherever they see us in, we should look like ballers. If we had more swag at Williams I would be an extremely happy person. Next year, I’m excited that we’ll have a new field and athletic complex and maybe from there swag will just go through the roof. Who knows.
What more do you do on campus?
Well, I’m a man of many talents. This is the first year that I decided to step out of my comfort zone. It was kind of brought on by the surgery-new leg, new me. Time to conquer everything. So this year I decided to not just be the Christian football player and branch out into the other fields. So I stepped it up and embraced my Haitian heritage and I’m on the board of SoCa, Students of Carribean Ancestry, as treasurer and also I’m in an African dance class because the Kusika (African dance group) show last semester was amazing and it encouraged me to sign up for this class. Don’t mean to brag but we’re doing pretty good. That’s what I’m in for now, but I definitely want to do more next year. But next year, who knows what more I’ll try to conquer.