“It’s the little things.”
If you were on the Varsity Field Hockey team at Glenbrook South High School, then that phrase probably sounds very familiar. It’s still ringing it my ears as I type up this article.
No, this isn’t about how my coach yelled at me for not lifting my stick high enough, and no, this is not about how my coach made me sprint until I thought I had reached my death. This is for my coaches who taught me strength and hard work. This is for my teammates who were my biggest supporters when I went out onto the field, for my teammates who became some of my best friends. This is for the love of the game- the love of playing a high school sport.
It seems not too long ago when I was sitting on the benches at tryouts, looking around nervously, trying to scope out people I knew. I knew nobody, and nobody knew me. I knew how to lift a stick but I didn’t know I had to keep my body low and knees bent. I knew playing a high school sport wouldn’t be easy, balancing school and work, but I didn’t know it would change my life the way it did.
If you played a sport in high school, it was probably the best and worst time of your life. The worst because you may have had two-a-days, practices in 80-degree weather at the start and end of the school year, being yelled at by your coach/coaches, that discouraging feeling of losing a game, dreadful practices the next day after losing that game, and saying goodbye. Goodbye forever. Being almost a sophomore in college, I can’t believe I won’t ever be playing that same sport.
Aside from some of those grueling practices, I enjoyed every minute of it, and that’s what made it the best time of my life. I enjoyed those two-a-days because it meant one extra practice a day to win that game. I enjoyed sweating out my Gatorade in that 80-degree heat because I knew I was pushing myself a little harder. I enjoyed losing that one game because it meant having to go to practice the next day and put in 120% so that we would win the next one. I enjoyed those dreadful practices because our coaches pushed us to our fullest potential, potential some of us thought we may not have had or could not reach. I enjoyed running the field until it felt like my lungs were about to collapse because I ran even better than I did the practice before. I enjoyed practicing those plays about what felt like 100 times in one day because it was those plays that won us our next game. It was those wins when my teammates and I would jump like maniacs whether we were on the sidelines or on the field. It was all those practices our coaches pushed for to get us to those wins. I enjoyed all four years of this. Because it’s the little things. The little things that kept me going.
