Though at different times and at different schools, Graham and Jada Chatoor have shared opportunities to compete at UAA institutions and for Trinidad & Tobago. Graham attended NYU, while Jada will graduate next month from Emory University.
“I visited New York City when I was 14 and fell in love with the city. I applied to a bunch of schools in the northeast and wanted to explore NYU more. I toured the school and it was a really cool thought experiment of seeing myself at this school,” Graham stated. “It was a unique experiment to be at a school without a campus and walking in between buildings, wondering what a normal college experience would look like. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
“I was very glad he went before I did and that he knew what to do. I had no idea how to start looking,” Jada admitted. “When Graham went to nationals in 2019, I was a sophomore in high school. The first thing I noticed was that the Emory women’s team’s spirit was unmatched and that it seemed like the men and women were one team.”
Like Graham, Jada also visited New York City at age 14 but had a much different reaction. “Besides getting lost when I was there, it is just a very high-paced city and coming from the Caribbean, I was not used to it. Emory was more a mix of a city and a suburb,” she described. “Emory was everything to me and ticked all my boxes. I loved all the coaches. I made my decision to go there so quickly because it was seamless after meeting the team members and getting a glimpse of the team and school. I knew I could challenge myself academically. It was the easiest ‘yes’ I have ever had.”
Graham has continued his love of New York as he is in his second semester at Yeshiva’s Cardozo School of Law. “I like it a lot. It is challenging in ways I didn’t expect. I had always planned to go to law school in the city but first I took two years off to swim with the Mission Viejo Nadadores and (former USA Swimming National Team member and Nadadores head coach) Jeff Julian. I had a great experience there and met a lot of great people,” communicated Graham, who has been committed to being a lawyer since he was a teenager. “I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney since I was 16. I was binging SVU (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) and NCIS. I enjoyed watching how attorneys went after it in court. I was a politics major and a lot of my professors were lawyers who came back to teach.”
Despite her reticence to be in New York as an undergraduate, Jada has not ruled it out in her future after graduating with her degree in neuroscience and behavioral biology with a minor in business. “I am applying to jobs and want to go back and get an MBA sometime,” she said.
The siblings did intersect once at the UAA Swimming & Diving Championships hosted by Emory. “It was fun. I got a lot of comments that Jada swims like me. It was really cool seeing her in the environment I had been in for three years. I did get a couple of dirty looks when I was standing with the Emory folks when Jada was swimming the mile,” he joked. “It was special for our family as our parents and grandfather were there.”
“It was funny when people started connecting the dots that we were siblings. I swam the 500 before him and then when he was in the pool people started asking, ‘Wait, is that your brother?’ Some people started calling me ‘long boy’s sister.’ It was awesome having Graham there and for our parents to see us both,” Jada added. “I was having a huge battle about whether I was living in his shadow, but it wasn’t true. I was grateful to be in a place people didn’t expect me to go.”
She said they never discussed going to the same school. Graham joked that it was a rule that none of the seven cousins in their family could go to college in the same state, much less the same school. “One cousin did break the rule by going to Fordham and that was a big deal,” he laughed.
Their great college experiences in and out of the pool notwithstanding, nothing compared to swimming for the honor of their home country. Among his many accomplishments, Graham set the national record in the 800 meters (8:16.65) and swam on the bronze medal-winning 400-meter relay at the Central American and Caribbean Swimming Championships in 2013. “It was rewarding wearing the colors and making people at home proud when I hopped on the deck, especially when I reached the podium. Any time it happened was a really proud moment and I was grateful each time,” he recounted.
“Swimming for our home country is something I will always remember as such a happy point in both our lives from ages eight to 17. I remember once during the school year, a high school friend asked me what I was doing that weekend so I invited her to come watch me compete for Trinidad. We traveled to so many countries together and heard our national anthem played. We have kept all our medals and our friendships from those days.”
“We have relationships with people across the Caribbean thanks to swimming. I knew (former Emory swimmer) Tyler Russell from the Bahamas since I was about 14 or 15. We have seen each other at least twice a year for the past decade,” Graham pointed out. “A lot of those people from the Caribbean I have seen throughout my life. It reminds us that we are not just in this little bubble, but part of the wider world.”