Being an athlete in high school defines you. Your days are spent competing, practicing in the gym and going to games with your team. But what happens after you graduate? You go to college and your athletic career is over. The thing that once defined you is gone. So what do you do next?
It’s weird not playing a competitive sport after high school. You don’t get the same feeling when the season is about to start. The rush is now replaced with a sadness and nostalgia of your old glory days of running up and down the court, hitting jump shots, spiking the ball over the net, and hitting home runs.
You will find yourself at the gym staying in shape, playing multiple intramural sports, going out for the club team and of course, attending every home game for your college team. You will try to get that rush you used to get when you were the one winning a big game.
You will miss bonding with your team and all the time you spent together on the buses to away games. You'll miss the loud laughter after a win and all the tears shed after a heartbreaking loss. You will look back on this and feel like a piece of you is missing.
Even though you loved playing, there are things that you won’t miss. Getting up even earlier for morning practices, which meant showering in the locker room and feeling gross for the rest of the day, running suicides till you couldn’t feel your legs anymore, and how sore you would feel after playing back-to-back games.
There’s one thing that you will never miss: that horrible feeling you’d get after losing, playing back the entire game in your head, seeing what you could have changed or done differently.
Not playing a sport will change who you are and give you the freedom to do things you couldn’t in high school because you were dedicated to athletics. You can become more involved, join clubs, and have more of a social life. This doesn’t mean you won’t miss it, because trust me you will, but you will appreciate the time you had playing your sport.
You will look back on when your coach would give pre and post game inspirational speeches and learn that there is more to life than the game. It’s the memories you made and the people you made them with that really matter.
