High school graduate Adul Samon has taken more from his commencement speaker than inspiring words: His speaker had saved his life before high school started.
On June 23, 2018, Samon, his soccer coach and 11 of his teammates were trapped in a cave in Thailand for over a week.
Just 14 at the time, Samon and the Wild Boars soccer team went to the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in northern Thailand without packing food or water. After heavy rainfall, floodwaters blocked their path and trapped the team. They tried taking turns digging a tunnel with their bare hands with little energy while a search for them across multiple countries commenced.
After nine days of surviving off minimal freshwater, Samon and the rest of the team were found by Rick Stanton, a volunteer from an elite British diving team. Stanton and the team supplied all the 13 of them with medicine and foil blanks before bringing them to the surface over three days.
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“I didn’t know what I should say or what I was supposed to say. I just happy that finally people found us,” Samon told ABC’s “World News Tonight.”
Now 19, Samon lives in the U.S. where he’s made a life for himself following the traumatic incident and still maintains his passion for soccer, ABC reported. He began studying at The Masters School in New York in 2020 with a full scholarship and eventually became captain of their soccer team, the outlet said.
Stanton attended Samon’s graduation ceremony and delivered the commencement address, according to post from the school.
“If you spend your life avoiding mistakes you might avoid failure but you’ll also never truly understand your potential. The only way to know the upper limits of your capabilities is through trial and error,” Stanton said during his speech.
Stanton told ABC he was proud to be partly responsible for Samon’s life in a way and to see him make the most of his opportunities.
Samon is headed to Middlebury College in Vermont this fall and has aspirations to become a doctor, according to ABC News.
“We have to keep adjusting to the environment where you are in order to survive. You have to keep adapting your life,” Samon said to ABC. “This is just incredible, it is this miracle. I never thought I would come this far, and I would be sitting here in the United States.”
