As many people graduated and bid their high school sports seasons farewell, some are preparing for a chaotic schedule of summer practices for the subsequent season, while others are training to play a sport with a new logo sprawled across their chest and more competition. Athletes in all three categories share one commonality: they all participated in the system that is modern high school sports. They participated in the overwhelming glory of victory and bitter sting of defeat. They participated in school personnel lauding them and treating them like they held a higher status in the school system. They participated in buying merchandise that helped them flaunt this status.

However, this entire high school sports system breeds tragedy. And I experienced it firsthand.

If you ever felt like seasons of any sport, whether it was soccer or basketball or lacrosse or cross country, left you feeling increasingly heartbroken, I understand the feeling. High school sports are held to such a high importance that practices have become so intense, so often, and ultimately so damaging because being a "champion" is the ultimate goal. Any school who wins a championship becomes royalty. So athletes are practiced to death. They feel they are working so hard but aren't improving, which is baffling and crushing. But the truth is, the practices are debilitating, not allowing for improvement.

I played field hockey and ran track in high school and I understand this phenomenon. Many track and cross country runners (both at my high school or really any high school across the country) believe that they peaked during their freshman or sophomore year but their times have regressed since then. They can never match the success of when they first began the sport. For me, I not only regressed, I became so injured that I was not able to run at all for the remainder of high school. My times in later years weren't worse--they didn't exist at all because my legs became so overworked.

Modern high school sports are now ego boosts for both the coaches and the athletes.

Wearing a varsity jacket is the equivalent of wearing a crown and golden robe. Promotion to varsity status is the equivalent of induction into knighthood. Coaching a team is the equivalent of ruling a nation. The process of coaches "knighting" their athletes is vicious. Sometimes athletes are promoted prematurely or when they aren't deserving, inflating their egos to unhealthily high levels. However, this inflation is a balloon, popped when a new coach doesn't see the same potential and crushes the athlete's dream.

In my own experience, coaches held so much power that I had been completely built up and torn down within the same season. This erratic process had murdered my passion for a sport I loved because I did not achieve varsity status. I was not a knight, and therefore I had a lower "status." I know so many athletes (and talented ones, too) who were built up so much in high school that their athletic careers collapsed and ended when coaches criticized them. This, to me, is tragic.

I lived through times when my self-esteem was elevated and I believed I was the best player ever, only to be berated the following day. I lived through seeing my friends mourn that they were "getting worse" and mourned the death of my own athletic career. I lived through school days becoming "free days" where we "do nothing" because everyone was sad that the football team lost. I lived through watching athletic careers end through high school sports that manipulated the self-worth of athletes.

And I am here to say that if you ever felt heartbroken from a high school sport, I am sorry. If the overrated nature of student-athletes and the record of the football team harmed your high school career, I am sorry. If you no longer can play for the sheer love of the game, I am sorry.

Sports should not have such control over your place in the social hierarchy or your own self-worth. Your inherent value does not depend on your high school sports achievements, regardless of what modern high school sports make you believe it does. Do a sport because of your own passion, and don't let the evil system of modern high school sports kill it.

Listen to me carefully: it isn't worth it.