What happens when athletes' dreams of going pro are crushed? Filmmaker studying UVic team aims to find out

Raymond Dimmitt arrived in B.C. in 2019 with big dreams. 

Having just turned 18, he'd moved away from the United Arab Emirates, where he grew up, to Vancouver Island. He was poised to study at the University of Victoria, an eager freshman with a history of playing high level basketball back home.

He planned to play for the University of Victoria's men's basketball team, where he figured he'd train and prepare for a career with the national team in Thailand, where he was born.

But Dimmitt said he was "quickly humbled" when he didn't make the team. 

"It was a very eye-opening experience to realize how much better the level of basketball is here in Canada," he said. "It was hard for me that I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out what I'm going to do with my life."

Now, five years later, with a degree in philosophy and environmental studies and some film directing credits on his resume, Dimmitts is using his lived experience to make a documentary about the fallout when athletes, in particular, find out life might not work out the way they'd planned. 

"My focus in school was philosophy, and I feel like now it's my chance to kind of tell the story that's not being told enough in this existential nature of what it means to be an athlete," he said. 

Dimmitt and a small film crew will follow the University of Victoria men's soccer team for the next two seasons, culminating in their journey to the U Sports Men's Soccer Championship in 2027, which the university is hosting.  

"Soccer especially, it is an incredibly challenging sport to make it professional," Dimmitt said. 

Dimmitt made it clear he doesn't want or expect the team to fail but, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), very few student athletes go on to professional sports careers. 

"I think some of them will have to grapple with this nature, that this reality may not be in the books for them, but also some will," he said. "But maybe in this process, if we succeed properly, we're able to exemplify how it's OK for the next generation of athletes to watch this and be feeling a little bit less worried about a future that doesn't involve sport." 

Coming to terms with that reality is completely normal, according to performance psychology consultant Roger Friesen. 

Friesen, who works with some of Canada's top athletes, including national teams qualifying for the Olympics, said how people react and come to terms with that feeling varies. 

"Disappointment and confusion is probably going to be a very real thing," he said from his home on B.C.'s Quadra Island.

"Often people's identities are wrapped up in that dream."

Universal experience

It's something that can be applied to anything in life, Friesen said: sports, music, getting a certain job, having a family, living a certain way — life doesn't always work out the way we plan. 

Learning how to be "mentally robust" and manage change are important parts of what he does when working with athletes. 

Friesen said course correction is another area he focuses on. When one thing doesn't work out, such as athletics, for example, it's important to know what our other abilities and interests are to help us move forward, he said. 

It's that common experience of coming to terms with not succeeding in the way we had planned that Dimmitt hopes will get people watching the film and talking about it. 

"If this isn't the most relatable topic, I don't know what it is," he said.

Dimmitt said he doesn't yet know when the film will be finished, but that he hopes people who view it feel seen.

"If someone in the audience watching, whether an ex-athlete or an ex-musician who wanted to go pro or be very famous or whatever, if they're able to watch this documentary and feel a little bit more understood that a dream they once had was not able to fulfill itself, and that's OK, if you're seen through it, I'd be on top of the world."