Yeah, this is absolutely fantastic. And extremely impressive.
Up until now, Olive Sagapolu has been mainly known to most nationally for his prowess on the football field. Entering his fourth-year season in Madison, Sagapolu has started 23 games during his time with the Badgers, including 10 in a 2017 season that saw him earn honorable mention All-Big Ten honors.
As it turns out, though, Sagapolu’s athleticism isn’t confined to merely on the field as, in this video sent out through UW’s official football Twitter account, the 6-2, 336-pound starting nose tackle lands a backflip on a beach in Hawaii.
Meet @OSagapolu:
— Wisconsin Football (@BadgerFootball) May 22, 2018
Olive Sagapolu is 336 lbs
Olive Sagapolu does backflips
Olive Sagapolu is our nose tackle
📷 https://t.co/d9B2nESFLx pic.twitter.com/URLADLcQj0
To repeat: the man in that video weighs 336 pounds. 336 pounds.
Then again, it shouldn’t be all that surprising given the fact that Sagapolu spent a portion of his senior year at football powerhouse Mater Dei High School in California as a member of the varsity cheerleading squad. Seriously.
“In a way, (cheerleading) does help because it shows how athletic I can be and I’m getting,” Sagapolu said by way of 247Sports.com way back in August of 2015. “I mean, I’m about a 300-pound guy doing a backflip. You don’t really see that a lot. Doing these other kinds of tricks also helps with hand-eye coordination. It does help with football. ...
"(People) were definitely surprised seeing me on the cheerleading team. They thought it was funny seeing... a big guy like me. For me, it is shocking to see the reaction from people’s faces. ... Just the whole thing about cheerleading is very different from football. It was something I wanted to do for my senior year and have fun with it.”
