Four years ago, I began to play the lesser known sport of Ultimate Frisbee. I went slightly kicking and screaming, as my mom had told me that I needed to join something because I “had no friends.” After seeing some post on social media or email, she told me I was to sign up for it, no questions asked. So, I did.

Now four years later I look back on that day and can only help but think it is one of the best days of my life. At the time, I had been dancing for 10 years. I specialized in ballet, tap, jazz, and pointe. It was my passion and dream. I loved dance with all my heart. It was my way of expression and release.

I wanted to dance into college. I had this big plan of at least minoring it, and maybe one day owning my own studio and training kids to have the passion for it I did, as my own dance instructor had. But all so slowly I began to fall in love with this new sport.

I didn’t realize my passion for Ultimate until my senior year of high school. I had casually played it through my sophomore and junior year, always sacrificing practices and games for anything dance related. I ensured my coaches that dance would always come first.

I would always put dance first.

After my junior year of high school, my ultimate coach convinced me to go play for the select club team in Cincinnati called Belle. I remember wanting to quit halfway through the summer because it was an entirely new level of the sport. It was more intense, more running, more training, and the coaches expected this entirely new level of commitment from me that I was not ready to give.

But I pushed through. I finished the season out and the team traveled to Nationals that summer placing second. At the end of that summer, I had realized I’d found a few of my closest friends and that Ultimate had slowly become something more special than dance.

I don’t know when exactly it became more special to me than the passion I was so focused on for so many years of my life, but when I realized it that summer going into my senior year, I was halted at a crossroads on what to do next.

As my senior year began, I started to hang out more and more with my Ultimate Frisbee friends. We’d go out for dinner after practice or games, and we’d do things on the weekends. I didn’t just fall in love with the sport, but the community. The Ultimate community had something I never seemed to find in the dance community in the 12 years I danced.

And I started to find I was actually a lot better at the sport than I thought I was. I started to push to go to more Ultimate things than dance things, and my dance schedule started to feel more like a hassle than something I loved. I made the decision to finish out my last year of dance with my last year of high school as well, as a sort of way to have closure with the sport.

And I still, reluctantly, kept dance my number one priority because I was afraid to let my dance instructor down. I knew how much she loved me and wanted me to succeed in the dancing world, but my mind was elsewhere.

I wanted to play Ultimate now. It was all I wanted to do. I was the captain of the team with my best friends, and I had the most amazing friend group someone could ever ask for. We were so tight, that even now only a few months away from when I graduated high school we are still in contact and hang out whenever we can.

I helped lead my team to second in the state for almost 10 consecutive years in a row, and I even helped us get ranked nationally by Ultiworld.

My love for dance still remained, but my passion had switched sides and was pulling me deeper into the Ultimate community.

I played that summer into the freshman year of college with my club again and even joined an adult club team for some extra experience. When dance ended, I was sad and I cried for sure, but it felt like I had been set free from something that was holding me back.

Almost a year later now from when my dancing career ended, I can say confidently that I’ve made an amazing decision of quitting dance and following my new passion. Yes, some days I look back and wish that chapter of my life had never ended, but now I look forward to the future and what this new amazing sport holds for me.

I have been given opportunities I could never have dreamed of with dance. I’ve traveled to different states, and have made friends across the globe. I even sit now waiting to hear if I’ll be one of the lucky ones to represent Team USA at the 2018 Worlds this year. And even if I don’t there’s still so much more for me to do in the next coming years with this sport.

In the end, I find that it’s OK to find a new passion. Just like me, you can go years thinking that something is your end-all/be-all. Only to find out that something has been sitting there just waiting for you to try it. It’s OK to let go of old things, as long as you never forget what they meant to you and how it has impacted your life.

I wouldn’t be where I am today without dance, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without Ultimate. Both have played an intricate part of my life, but one chapter has closed and the other has just begun.