Biography - Dorji Khan #4

[Oddpurplefly 30]

Dorji Khan was born in Mongolia to a stay-at-home mother and farmer father. They lived a relatively quiet life. Dorji was the youngest of three boys. His older brothers were both into sports; the oldest was infatuated with basketball and the middle brother loved soccer and street hockey. 
Dorji got into sports thanks to his brothers but ended up closest with his middle brother due to his forming love of street hockey. At the age of six, Dorji would watch his brother play, and was even invited to play sometimes by his brother’s friends. They went easy on him at first, but by the age of nine Dorji was on-par with the skill of the eleven-year-olds around him. 
Around the age of ten, Dorji and his brothers were asked to help out on the farm, due to some of the farm’s workers being sick and unable to work. Dorji put his all into work, and stayed working after the workers came back. He liked how the hard made him feel and would do his best to find a balance between playing street hockey and helping out on the farm.
Due to all his hard work, Dorji built up a lot of muscle over the years, and combined with inheriting his father’s looming height, he was nicknamed “The Monster” in high school. 
At sixteen Dorji became a part of his school’s hockey team. They didn’t win every game, but when Dorji wasn’t exhausted from farm work, they had a better chance of winning. There was a point when the hockey coach asked Dorji’s father if Dorji could cut back on some of the farm work and his father declined. He even scolded Dorji for thinking that he could just walk away after all the work he had done for the family. His father even told him that he would take over the farm one day. This scolding was an eye opener to Dorji. He loved working on the family farm but didn’t want it to be his life. He wanted to pursue a career in hockey.
Dorji still kept up on his work at home, but after talking to his coach about his dream, he started training harder so he might get recruited some day. He applied for hockey applications to colleges far from home, and even looked into getting a job so he could save money to leave the country and try pursuing hockey in the Canada. Unfortunately, everyone in their town knew he worked on the farm and didn’t want to take Dorji from that hard work. 
With no one willing to give him a job, he put more energy into hockey. He had always been competitive, but he really let it start to stand out when he was seventeen. Some blamed his competitive nature on him being a descendant of the great Genghis Khan, but in reality, it was due to his drive and desire to prove himself. 
At eighteen his coach told him that a recruiter would be coming to watch one of their games. This news sent Dorji into a training frenzy. He skipped doing his usual farm chores to go for runs, work out, and skate on the ice. He needed to be the best guy on the ice. 
When the game came, he wasn’t nervous. He had put so much work in that he knew the recruiter would notice him. He focused on the game, putting in his all. He was more aggressive than usual, but otherwise played at his usual skill level. 
After the game, which the won by a long shot, the coach had a talk with Dorji, not quite scolding him, but reminding him that he was bigger and more powerful than most of the other teenagers and that he needed to be more careful. During this talk, the recruiter came over and corrected the coach, telling Dorji that his aggressiveness will be met with the same amount of aggression in the big leads. He then offered to take Dorji to the Canada to try out for a team. Dorji accepted right away, and when he told his parents his father snapped, yelling at him and telling Dorji that he wasn’t going anywhere. 
The night he was meant to leave, Dorji’s mother and brothers helped him pack and even accompanied him to the airport. They all said goodbye to him and wished him luck. He knew he needed to succeed because his father would never allow him back. He promised to write, then left.
When in Canada, Dorji had to adjust to the culture, weather, and social changes. Thankfully the only thing that he didn’t have to adjust to was hockey. He nailed the tryouts and was given the opportunity to play on a team. After a first successful year, he got drafted by the Halifax 21st VHLM team and currently fighting his way to become one of the greats.