At age 16 I was told that I was incapable of being an athlete, I was told tennis was not a sport, I was told I could never play “a real man’s sport”. That same year, I stepped onto a soccer pitch for the first time in my life, I lined up against young men who had been playing the sport for more than a decade.Yet, I went out there with confidence and challenged them along with the notion that I could not play a real sport. Although, I was scared to embarrass myself, I knew that this decision would be one of the greatest I would ever make because of the life experiences I would gain from leaving my comfort zone for the first time,
As I walked out, I heard the barrage of laughing from those who doubted me. I could feel the constant joking about
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Constant running and never ending judgement from those around me. Yet, this did not make me stop. I challenged my teammates and coaches belief that I could not play and quickly became one of the most used players on the team. I nearly made the varsity team and started several games on Junior Varsity. I played amongst those who doubted me and became one of them. I became a soccer player, I learned to lead those around me, adapt to an environment I had yet to encounter, and how to change people’s opinion about me. It was the proudest moment of my adolescent life when the coach said an amazing heartfelt speech about how I would challenge both him and myself everyday at practice because I wanted to prove to those surrounding me I deserved to be playing on the pitch amongst them. The decision I made to go out for a sport I had never played my junior year of high school is by far the turning point of my life, I truly believe it changed me and gave me another dimension to my complex personality. I gave me an experience unlike that of any other person because I am not a natural athlete, I am just a child who has been doubted but has destroyed that doubt over and over
Yet my apprehension prevailed as I continued to fear getting put in the game in case another player was injured. I was still afraid of making mistakes and getting blamed by screaming coaches and angry teammates. Sometimes these fears came true. During my sophomore season, my position led me to play in the varsity games on many occasions. On such occasions, I often made mistakes. Most of the time the mistakes were not significant; they rarely changed the outcome of a play. Yet I received a thorough verbal lashing at practice for the mistakes I had made. These occurrences only compounded my fears of playing. However, I did not always make mistakes. Sometimes I made great plays, for which I was congratulated. Now, as I dawn on my senior year of soccer, I feel like a changed person.
It was a dark thursday night in April. The sky was clear enough to see the moon shining brightly along with many small circular diamonds. I’m in a dark blue Avalanche, being driven to a baseball diamond. I play for the MIlwaukee Brewers on a little league level. It’s my last game of the season, and I can’t wait for the umpire to say the words “Play Ball” (which states that the game has begun).
“Play ball.” Says the umpire as the Senior Rams take the field and the Hempstead Mustangs were getting ready to bat. This was it. This was our final chance to make all of our hard work pay off, and achieve the one main goal we all had in mind, state.
Growing up I had focused on competitive soccer. Soccer challenged me both physically and mentally and I learned to love these demands on the field. These challenges helped me foster a self-confidence in myself when it came to athletics. When I fractured my tibia playing against my rival high school, sending my knee cap into my thigh, I was faced with a new test. The sport that I loved was taken away from me for an extended period of time and it took away part of my identity. Who was I without soccer?
When I was eight years old, I played my first season of soccer. The real reason I played soccer was because my dad forced me to play. I loved to play all kinds of sports such as basketball, baseball and football but I was never interested in soccer. After my first practice I already realized soccer was not for me. I told my dad that I did not want to play anymore but he would not listen and made me keep going to practice. At my 3rd practice, the whole team was running laps and I tripped over a stick and fell down. My ankle was hurting pretty bad but I knew I was going to be fine. While I was lying on the ground, I thought to myself If I tell the coach and my dad that my ankle is hurt really bad than I won’t have to play anymore. I thought it was a genius idea at the time. I told them just that and it worked! I have no idea how my dad knew this but once I got home he knew that I was milking my injury. He told me something that night that I won’t ever forget. He told me “you didn’t just give up on yourself, you gave up on your team”. He called the coach the next day and told him that
During our first practice, we discovered how greatly we depended on our male teammates, and we understood that we could now only rely upon ourselves. As the next few months went on, each team member developed different skills, and I found myself drawn to the position of midfielder. This duty required me to run up and down the full field for entire games consisting of two forty-minute halves, whereas previously I found myself lucky to play for ten minutes per half. I attribute most of my growth to my coach, who repeatedly told me to be confident in my ability, which allowed me to take risks on the field. As I grew closer to my teammates and gained more in-game experience, I discovered that I was capable of far more than I previously thought. Being on the first female Varsity team taught me to never limit myself, and to always try harder, especially when I feel
I think I am with the con side, because I think that golf is more of a game than a sport. In my own opinion, I think it’s not a sport because it doesn’t require a specific age or weight. Sport is about moving your body fast and sweating so players can lose weight or build their body muscles. For Golf, it doesn’t require that much of movement. In fact, it is more of a fun game with friends. I would take Soccer as a great example. Because I’m a soccer fan, I know how it works so I will go ahead and explain it. For soccer, players run a lot and winning the match is the motivation for players to do their best in the game and run or play as fast and professional as they can, and that’s how we burn fats and stay in shape. When it comes to Golf, players
Ever since I could remember, soccer had been in my life. If there was a soccer team that needed a coach, my father was always the first to volunteer. There were almost too many strenuous weekends spent hours away from home for soccer tournaments to count. My entire family, consisting of my parents, my siblings, my dog, and myself, packed in a mini-van heading to a city that I had never heard of for soccer games. But when I entered high school, all that would soon go away. I kept playing the same sport that I always had, although now I had to wake up at five in the morning for six hours of high school soccer practice in the smoldering summer heat in order to make the high school team. High School sports were more competitive than anything I had done before. I put in as much effort as I could to make the Varsity High School team, staying out past dinner to practice even longer. I was utterly divulged in soccer and trying to be the best I could be. Soon, I would regret placing a game over spending time with my family.
My plans when I get older where like every other child's. I want to be in the NFL. To get where I am you have to start at a young age. I showed up at practice everyday and on time. I also studied the play sheets and went through all my routes. I studied day and night to be where I am. It wasn't easy. There was no time to play games get in trouble do drugs or hang out with friend on an everyday bases. You have to tighten up be a man. It's not like I woke up one day and I was starting running back I had to do what's right stay in school not miss a day because that one day could have been the most important day ever and I wouldn't have even known. You know why?? Because I was and didn't show up to school. Don't be that person I used to be.
For a majority of people in the world, if they were to wake up with 350 million dollars, and would be able to be fully retired by 38 years old, then they would be very content and happy with their lives. Being able to wake up every day in a big mansion, lying with your family by the poolside, not worrying about financial issues for yourself or loved ones, and lastly having the great opportunity for you and your whole family, to not work a day the rest of your lives. It is an ideal situation that approximately 99.99% of people would want. But, an outlier, challenges those astonishing odds, by using their influence and popularity, to help out and make a difference. Not
What is the only thing harder than disciplining a dozen ten year olds? Disciplining them on ice! All throughout my life I’ve played sports, and no matter what sport it was, there was always one person who seemed to have it out for me…the referee. The referee is one of the most hated people in the world of sports, but is also one of the most crucial. I grew up with the mindset that the referee was the enemy. Whenever they made a call against me or my team, they were always wrong, no matter how obvious the penalty was. But one day, my whole perspective on referees changed---the day I became a referee.
For the past 3 or 4 years now, I have become pretty good at tennis for my age group. I started off by learning from my grandfather, who is a tennis coach in Greenville Ohio. Tennis is a fun sport to play, but its not that simple to learn.
From middle to high school my entire, the entire incentive I had switches. During high school, my personality is much different than that in which middle school was. I begin focusing completely on my grades, finding friends who accept me for my who I actually am, and begin planning for my future. This is where my real identity is coming in. I know the type of person that I am, how I behave, what I like and dislike, etc. and it is all coming together. One of the things that shapes my identity is playing tennis. Tennis is a sport where you have nobody but yourself to rely. After watching Serena Williams winning the US Open in 2012, a spark ignited in me and I trained hard at tennis for nearly 4 years, and have gotten pretty decent at it. Tennis
Tennis, a great sport that requires a lot of concentration, balance, and strength. In the beginning of high school, tennis was what started everything. Since tennis starts in the summer, my teammates will be the first people who I will meet before school starts. Since my freshmen year, I was always a doubles player, but that does not mean that it will be easy work. Having a partner during tennis does not mean that since there are two people playing it will be less work to be done. Actually, having a double’s partner may actually be more work because you have to be able to communicate with your partner and perform great sportsmanship awards. During the summer of my sophomore year, I trained hard with a friend to get better which later
Getting cut from the soccer team was a wakeup call that taught me a hard lesson: Talent alone won’t guarantee success. The coaches didn’t pick me not because I failed to show my skill but because of my nonchalant attitude at tryouts. Instead of holding their critique personally, I took their comments as motivation to change my attitude. From that experience on, I learned that attitude play an important role in success.