If you’re like me, you’ve played sports your whole life and you’ve never known life without it. In high school, sports took up a good majority of my time and it was something I looked forward to every day.

I played tennis and soccer but now that I’m in college I don’t play anything. I wasn’t sure how to join intramural sports and I wasn’t confident in myself even though I’ve been playing since I was 4.

When people ask me what I miss the most about high school, it’s the sports. I miss the community, the friends, the support, the happiness when you or your teammate scores. The joy that fills you when you win a hard tennis match.

I miss the long bus rides and the locker room. I miss being a part of something where everyone around you loves that one thing just as much as you.

I realized that I will never have that again. I can join an intramural team or try to join a club team but all of those things that I loved from high school sports will never be apart of my life again.

While there were times I hated it and wanted to quit there were also all the good times that brought me back time and time again.

Playing high school sports allowed me to learn things about myself and general life lessons. I wouldn’t trade the tears, sweat, many injuries or heartbreak from loss for the lifelong memories, friends, and lessons I gained. If I could, I would play high school sports forever.

Because I was always doing a sport in high school it gave me a chance to exercise daily and that helped keep me in shape but once I came to college all of that changed. I no longer had built in exercise and there was food everywhere I looked.

I like exercising but I don’t like the gym. The gym is scary and has a lot of people who know what they are doing and let me tell you, I do not know what I'm doing. Playing sports never felt like a workout because I was working out for something I loved and to improve.

This year was hard because I had to learn to like the gym and learn how to work out there. Going into my next few years at school I want to join intramural teams and become more involved in a sport to hopefully help fill some of the void caused by not playing in high school anymore.

College is great and different. It’s a wonderful place to try new things, meet new people and learn but that being said I will always miss high school sports.