Senior midfielder Daniel Lovitz of the Elon University men’s soccer team is a man of many talents, most of which he’s put in his rearview mirror as he prepares for his last season in maroon and gold. But as he looks back on his time as a martial arts student, he recalls his passion for the activity he had once vehemently pursued — and it’s not exactly mainstream. 

“[Karate] was really something that my parents got me into when I was younger,” Lovitz said. “I started when I was 4 — about the same age I actually started playing soccer — and it was really, to be fair, more of a commitment than soccer was for the first many years of my life. I was going two or three times a week for about an hour or two hours, progressing and getting to the next belt. I had a great group of people and family friends and kids around my age — even people from the neighborhood — that were doing the same thing at the same time.”

The decision was mutual, Lovitz said, because of his interest in the sport and his parents’ concern about his safety around his friends and in school.

“I was much smaller when I was a kid compared to all of my friends and I would always come home with little knocks and bruises from getting bullied around a little bit,” Lovitz said. “Nothing terrible, but my parents thought it would be cool and I thought it would be cool because I loved watching Bruce Lee movies and all that stuff — I was into it so I wasn’t complaining. I thought it was awesome to do it.”

He learned several different forms of karate, but it was the simplest form that he took with him into his future endeavors, including soccer.

“There’s tons of different types of karate," Lovitz said. "I used to know how to do many more, but [the most common was] called kenpo karate. It was all ex-cops teaching us and people from the neighborhood we knew — pretty much those were the people we knew not to screw around with. A lot of people think about karate and think about crazy stuff, mainly Asian influence, but really it was kind of just teaching young kids in the neighborhood how to defend themselves. It was so cool to actually follow through and go through all the steps and really grow. I actually learned most of my dedication and hard work from karate.”

After years of diligent work, Lovitz rose in rank and eventually earned his preliminary black belt. It was then he decided to drop the sport that had consumed his life for so long in order to concentrate on other obligations.

“It kind of got to the point where I was playing baseball competitively and that was going really well at the time,” he said. “Soccer was always such a huge part of my life and once I got to the black belt, I had the choice of going for the next degree of black belt and keep increasing it or stop. To be fair, a lot of the people I was doing it with just wanted to say they got the black belt and just kind of peel off from there, and it didn’t seem like a bad option at the time.”

Lovitz then reassessed his priorities and discovered his love for karate had waned.

“Do I regret it? Maybe a little bit,” he said. “It was such a cool thing to be able to do for that long a period of time. I was grateful for it, but definitely once I got to black belt, once I was 14, I kind of let it go and focused more on soccer and baseball.”

Lovitz then stuck with baseball and lacrosse in middle school before gravitating to soccer.

“Baseball kind of fizzled out and I got into lacrosse, but then soccer kind of just took the reins throughout high school and luckily it ended with me here,” Lovitz said. “I can’t really complain too much at all.”

Now, with his karate career a distant memory, Lovitz uses the sport as a way to connect with his fellow classmates, believing his prowess is a good conversation starter.

“You know how you always need an ice breaker at the beginning of every class? It’s always good to be able to pull that one out of your back pocket,” Lovitz said. “People always ask me, ‘Can you do a move?’ or ‘Could you do something?’ and I’m like, ‘No, I’ll hurt myself.’ I’m sure something would go wrong now if I tried it because I’ve lost touch with it, but it was such a cool experience.”