I played a lot of sports growing up. I played softball, basketball, tennis, soccer, and I even danced for a short time when I was little. My main sport, however, was softball. I started when I was five and I played up until I graduated high school. I pitched for around ten years and it was my favourite thing to do. Being in the circle was my happy place. Sports haven’t always been enjoyable though. There were some ups and downs, that’s for sure. Through the hardships, I learned many valuable life lessons that I don’t believe I would have learned if I never experienced what I did. This article is about the most important lessons I learned during my years playing sports.

I learned work ethic early in my career as a pitcher. I decided when I was around 8 or 9 that I wanted to give pitching try. My dad was all for it and he was my catcher and coach from then on. Practicing pitching three to four days a week was hard for me as a little kid. I wasn’t used to dedicating all my time to something besides watching tv or playing Barbies. Every week I would practice and every time I would throw a fit and every time my dad dragged me along. Until he didn’t have to. Sure, even towards the end of my career I would still fight him on going to practice, but deep down I knew I needed to in order to get better. This work ethic I learned through pitching carried into my daily life. Studying became less of a hassle because I knew I had to do it.

I also learned the difference between not liking something and being lazy. You think I wanted to be pitching every night while my friends were out having fun? You think I wanted to be plan my life around seeing pitching coaches and games? Heck no! I wanted to go out and have fun. I didn’t want to be freezing in the baseball room during winter or sweating on the softball field during summer. But I didn’t quit because I loved it more than anything. What I didn’t love was putting in the extra work during the off season. That never made me consider quitting though. What I accomplished during the actual season made the work worth it in the end. Learning to differentiate being lazy and not liking something is incredibly important. It seems that most people don’t learn this and it’s just sad.

Spending so much time playing multiple sports at once and jumbling schoolwork was tough. I had no choice to learn time management at a young age. I had to learn to get my homework done during study hall because I knew I had a game later that day. I had to learn to get projects done ahead of time because I had a tournament that weekend and I would be three hours away from my project partners. I practiced this life lesson a lot at college. Homework, studying, friends, meetings, etc. all had to be balanced and thanks to sports I was able to learn this.

During the winter of my senior year my shoulder started hurting when I was coming off of break. I had always had trouble with my elbow between tendonitis and tennis elbow but I always worked through the pain. My chiropractor told me my shoulder was in bad condition. He used the analogy that it was like I had Carpal Tunnel in my shoulder and it was serious. If I continued pitching I would most likely need surgery and to go to physical therapy two to three days a week. Obviously that was impossible since I had games every school day. I was expected to pitch all of them too. I had to give it up. There was no feasible way to continue pitching. I had to give up something that had been my life since I was 9. It was hard, really really hard. I had to learn to bond with my dad in a way other than pitching practice which was where we would talk about our day at school and work. I had to learn a different position that didn’t hurt my shoulder too much. I had to learn to trust someone else with my beloved position that I had been playing for as long as I could imagine. But during this change I learned to persevere. I learned to adapt to change. Adaptation and perseverance are necessary in life and are more of a skillset than a learned lesson, but I am still grateful to have learned to do these things by playing sports.

I learned respect and confidence thanks to sports, too. I learned to respect my coaches, teammates, as well as the opposing teams. My respect towards others resulted in them respecting me in return. From their respect, I actually learned to respect myself. This newfound respect caused me to become more confident. I was never confident before. Never. But seeing others count on me and cheer for me made me realize I was pretty awesome. No one was putting in as much time and work as I was. No one had even come close to starting as many games pitching as I had on the multitude of teams I had played for. No one had the same bond as I did with softball. Everyone knew I was good, but I finally learned that I was good.

The last lesson I learned from sports is to enjoy the moment because it will be over before you know it.