Looking back at the past four years of college life, my story has definitely not been anything close to what I had imagined. After high school I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to play Division 1 baseball for an up and coming program not too far away from where I grew up in the northeast. Just like anyone my age in my situation, I aspired to have a successful college career and earn a chance to showcase my abilities at a higher level after school. Who doesn't dream of getting to play a game that they have loved their entire life at the professional level and make it their career? To my surprise, I only spent three semesters at the big time division 1 school before transferring to a junior college in South Carolina where I finished the last semester of my sophomore year and the spring baseball season. After a successful sophomore season in South Carolina, I transferred to a consistently national ranked Division 2 school in the southern part of North Carolina where I played my entire junior year. Currently, I am still attending this school, but was not able to play baseball this year due to being just three credit hours shy to be eligible. Sadly, I look back and recognize what I did to put myself in that hole, but that is a story for another day.
Anyone who has gotten the opportunity to play collegiate sports can tell you, or even those people who were just truly passionate about their game but may not have been given the chance to continue their career past high school, playing a serious sport is something that can almost be considered a full-time job. The hours I have spent doing team-oriented practices, workouts, individual work, study halls, meetings, or even just wasting time still surrounded by those same people, isn't just a daily routine for us, it is a lifestyle that consumes you and becomes how you see and project yourself: as an athlete. This is the first year in about as long as I can remember that I have not been on a team, specifically baseball, for this long. To be honest, it is pretty difficult. I have spent my entire life working to be one thing, and that's the one thing that I am not anymore. Literally years of my life have been devoted to this sport and now I stand outside the fence and watch my teammates, friends, roommates, and what seemed like family for so long, playing our game without me. Its a hard pill to swallow. I am lucky to have come across a coaching job nearby that allows me to stay close to the game I love. I do enjoy the free time and not having coaches yell and bitch all the time, but given the opportunity, I know that I would give anything to go back in time and slap my younger self square in the face. I would tell me to stop acting like a fool and focus on what you love. Because when it's gone, all you can do is think back and ask yourself what if I had done this differently.
