The Australian guard is something of a Renaissance man - and a pretty good shooter, too
Skydiving, jiu-jitsu, and F1; the many interests of Cluj’s Mitch Creek
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The arrival of Mitch Creek in Romania for the start of this season with U-BT Cluj-Napoca says a lot about the Australian. The 33-year-old showed up at the airport with luggage that included a parachute and helmet for one of his many interests - skydiving. In fact, the BKT EuroCup rookie considers himself many things besides a professional basketball player.
Creek says he has skydived about 350 times since doing it for the first time at age 14 as a birthday present from his mother.
“There have been a lot of really amazing places I've jumped and landed: at air shows, on beaches, in people's backyards. We jumped out of hot air balloons for people’s birthdays, out of helicopters. We’ve jumped out of war planes. We've jumped out of pretty much anything and I'm not opposed to jumping off anything,” Creek said with a thick Australian accent.
But skydiving for Creek is not what many people might imagine.
“I don't do it for the adrenaline. I don't get adrenaline out of it in any way,” he explained. “You go into the day understanding that you've learned a skill or a hobby. You’ve trained yourself to be as risk-averse as possible, just like driving a car, just like using a sharp knife to cut vegetables. You have to train these skills.”
Just like some people are scared to chop onions really fast, others are trained to do so almost as second nature. And skydiving is similar to that for Creek, who sees it as a release.
“I just escape and I'm by myself. I have no worries. I have no care for anything else in the world. It's about me, myself, and no one else in the world can do or say anything in that moment that can alter my state of self-awareness, self-love and self-respect. And I think that's why it's so calming.”
The Horsham native says the skydiving can be traced back to his life as a country kid in Victoria in southeastern Australia, taking off with his bike at 7:30 in the morning and not coming back until 17:00.
“You had this sense of freedom, and you had this sense of adventure. And that just stayed with me throughout my whole life so far,” said Creek, who moved away from home at age 16 to attend the famed Australian Institute of Sport.
“I had to mature at a much younger age, even though probably many would contemplate that I didn't mature until an older age. And maybe I'm still a kid in a lot of ways. I think the sense of adventure and curiosity never stopped.”
Creek said he balances his life as an athlete, businessman and partner and his social life and family. And that’s what makes him himself.
"All those different people are under the one person. I'm not a professional basketballer. I don't identify as a professional basketballer. I'm Mitch Creek. I'm a person. And that person has a lot of different characters because of my different personalities.”
Thanks to his ultra-curious personality, Creek gets an itch just about every six months to try something new as a hobby.
Last season while playing in Canada, he was struggling to find a place to practice boxing - one of his past urges - so he gave jiu-jitsu a try.
“It was one of the most terrifying things I've ever done. To get choked out and to be bent in places that your body's not normally meant to bend in by little tiny humans - males, females, young, old, it didn't matter who they were or what they look like - I was getting my ass kicked.”
Creek thought he was pretty capable of defending himself in terms of a confrontation. And he wanted to be able to protect his daughter, his partner and her son. But he learned otherwise quickly.
“I thought I was capable until I went into a jiu-jitsu class and I was getting submitted by a 60-year-old man who was a third of my size and weight and just basically bullied me like a child.”
Creek has already found a place in Cluj where he can continue his jiu-jitsu training.
Creek is also a passionate motorcycle rider and has even raced some in Australia. He also likes vintage American cars and has built a couple cars. He says he is currently building a 1984 Chevrolet C10.
Speaking of cars and racing, Creek is a big fan of Formula One. And that is putting it mildly.
"I don't miss a single training, practice session or qualifying or race, and I haven't for probably the last 10 years,” he said.
And Creek has made sure people around him don’t tell him the results of anything F1.
“I've had previous teammates that have spoiled it for me and I've had to warn them very carefully,” he said. “We don't talk about Formula One until you ask the question: Hey, have you seen qualifying? Did you see practice? Have you seen the sprint race? And if the answer is no, you shut the hell up. That's the last question about it.”
If he can’t watch any session or race live, he will watch it on demand within the next 24 hours - of course, not knowing what happened.
What about his next hobby itch?
It’s art. Drawing to be more specific.
“Drawing is actually one of the things that I always liked when I was young. But I obviously got out of it as an adult a bit more and now I've kind of picked it up again,” Creek said.
Basketball is an opportunity to express myself on the court. To express myself in a way that allows others to say, damn, that guy has a lot of fun and he plays the game the right way. He's not just a basketballer. There's more to him.
All this talk about skydiving, jiu-jitsu, motorcycles, Formula One and now drawing leaves one to wonder what basketball actually means to Creek.
"It's shifted over the years,” he said. “Basketball used to be an identity because I thought that's what I wanted to be. I thought that being a famous basketballer, being successful, going out and having drinks and meeting the girls and going to cool places, that's what it was all about. It couldn't have been further from the truth.
“There are times when it's a lot of fun. It is really cool to have and be in those situations. But as I've matured over the years, my life has shifted. And for me now, basketball is an opportunity to express myself on the court. To express myself in a way that allows others to say, damn, that guy has a lot of fun and he plays the game the right way. He's not just a basketballer. There's more to him. And it makes people question the narrative of what is a basketballer, what is a professional athlete.”
Creek now wants to be an inspiration to others.
“I just want people to realize that anything is achievable. Through constant effort and intent on breaking down your goals and trying to chip away at them slowly, anything is achievable. I'm proof of that. So if I can inspire the next generation just to give it a crack and to dream outlandishly large, then believe in it at all costs. It'll be worth it.”
In the mean time, Creek will be watching the F1 in between drawing, practicing jiu-jitsu and oh, yeah, playing basketball.
