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Finally tonight, it was Albert Einstein who once said, “Any fool can know, but the point is to understand.” Well, in tonight’s Weekend Journal, CBS’s Carter Evans reports on a young man who already knows a lot.
— So first, I’m going to just go and teach you a breakfall, so so if I do take you down, you don’t hurt yourself.
CARTER EVANS: AJ Iredell has a way of taking life’s challenges to the mat.
— We’re paddling out by the rocks right there because there’s a rip current.
CARTER EVANS: When we first met two years ago, he was a 12-year-old surf phenom ripping waves in southern California, sponsored and heading to the pro circuit.
— So what do you think is your favorite thing about surfing?
— The people I surf with. It’s one thing to be good at surfing, but it’s another thing to share it with people.
SPECTATOR: Nice. Lock it up. Beautiful.
CARTER EVANS: Now at 14, jiu-jitsu is his life. He’s even got me in a gi.
— And then– oh.
— I’m so out of my comfort zone.
But AJ knows exactly what he’s doing. Over the past two years, he’s become a world champion.
— I just really felt this is what I was passionate about, and this is really what made me happy.
Get under.
CARTER EVANS: The eighth-grader now trains six hours a day, which forced him to make a hard decision about surfing.
— I can’t train as much if I’m doing both, so I’ve got to pick one.
CARTER EVANS: He picked jiu-jitsu and decided to home school so he could have even more time to work out, coach younger kids, and even help run a charity with his dad called Homefront Fighters, which supports military families.
Have you ever failed at something?
— Yeah, I do have failures and setbacks, but that really just inspires me. Most people, when they see that failure, they run away from it, but you’ve got to run towards that failure and then keep moving past it.
— When I hear him say those things, if I didn’t know him, I would be like, this kid is full of it.
CARTER EVANS: But AJ’s dad, Joe, says it’s not an act. It’s who he is.
— And I have five kids, so I can be very subjective. He sees things differently, and I think it kind of pours into everything that he does, which is really, as a dad, I’m really proud.
AJ IREDELL: I believe if I put in the work and I go through the hardships, then it will pay off in the end.
— What if it doesn’t?
— Then I’ve just got to keep working at it and then keep getting better at it.
— You won’t accept no for an answer?
— No, that’s not happening. I’m not giving up at it.
CARTER EVANS: His sport may have changed, but this teen still has the heart of a champion. Carter Evans, CBS News, Carlsbad, California.
— Run toward the failure and move past it. Thank you, AJ.