Growing up playing sports, you experience a lot of things and you make a lot of memories—some good and some bad. Looking back, it’s easy to see how the good memories helped to shape who you are today. You remember that time you scored the winning goal, served an ace, or hit a homerun, and your confidence level boosts just a little. The bad memories… Well, we don’t have to talk about those. Not only do all these experiences “build character,” as they say, but they also help prepare you for the real world in ways you might not have expected.

1. When your coach decided practice was going to last an actual eternity

The schedule said three to five, but that meant nothing to your coach. You can remember it now: The two hours are almost up. You’re finishing the last play, the last rally. You’re covered in sweat and ready to jump in your car, turn the AC on full-blast, and find your way to the nearest Sonic. Then your coach says those detestable words... “OK, everybody on the line.”

The life skill this experience earns you is seemingly obvious—perseverance. What you might not realize is how often you’re going to need it. Whether it’s studying for a comprehensive college final or having to work overtime at your future job, your brain knows how to push through when you feel like quitting. You can work harder and go longer than other people because you’ve got muscle memory telling you how. So, thanks to your coach’s corrupted sense of time, you can outshine everyone in the classroom and succeed in the workplace!

2. When you had to run for every single error

This was like some form of cruel and unusual punishment. You were doing so well; you were on a roll. Then, that one shot hits the top of the net. That one catch bounces out of your glove. As soon as you realize what you’ve done and before you even have time to scream, “No!” your coach tells you to start running. You remember. How could you forget?

However, you should probably thank your coach for this dreadful experience, too. This torturous drill gave you a work ethic that begets success. Because you were punished until you reached it, you know how much effort it takes to achieve success and you have the ability to do it. Studies show that approximately 75 percent of employers are more likely to hire you if they know you were an athlete because of this work ethic. So, worry not! All those laps were worth so much more than a perfect topspin lob; they just might get you a job!

3. Somewhere along the way, you got super competitive

“Winning isn’t everything!” “Teamwork is what really matters!” You’ve heard these and other clichés all your life, and you always accepted them to some degree. Then, one day, you lost an important district game. Or a semi-final match. Or a playoff game. You realized the season was over, and you started thinking about all the things you could have done differently. Iff you had, maybe you would’ve won.

And you lost it.

However your competitiveness manifests itself—irrational anger, crying, somber silence, all of the above—you discovered a new side of yourself that wasn’t very pretty.

Although at the time, your competitiveness was not well-received, you should be glad to have that trait now. Studies show that the competitiveness you develop from playing high school sports actually results in you earning more money in your future job! Apparently, people with a competitive nature tend to choose jobs with higher incomes and have the ability to work their way up to higher-paying positions.

4. Team drama was inevitable

Whether you played a team sport or an individual sport like tennis, you still had teammates that you practiced with every day, took road trips with to out-of-town games, and had to count on. And, as we all know, spending that much time with that many other people can lead to… conflicts.

These little (or sometimes big) conflicts were really annoying because they created an unsettling feeling among your team members. You never knew who was on whose side or why those two were fighting or why you couldn’t just resolve your differences and get back to the game.

But these conflicts had to be resolved. Whether your coach mandated you talk it out until you reach a solution or you did it yourselves, you had to put an end to the drama so you could work together as a team again. This usually consisted of awkward confrontations or lengthy talks in the locker room, which were never fun.

All was not for naught, however, because studies show that even this aspect of playing sports makes you more likely to be hired by most employers. Studies show that in today’s workplace, employers value emotional intelligence over academic intelligence. They value the ability to read people and resolve conflicts, and by playing sports, you’re almost forced to develop this emotional intelligence.

5. You had to learn mental toughness

Everyone goes through slumps. Remember that time you couldn’t pitch a strike or hit a serve in to save your life? We’ve all been in that place where something just wasn’t working and it felt unfixable. But you had to work yourself out of it. You had no choice. The difference here is that your coach couldn’t do it for you. You had to decide for yourself you weren’t going to give up and sit on the bench for the rest of your high school career. You had to find the strength in your own mind to climb your way back up again.

In the real world, we still go through slumps, but you’ve got the advantage on life here because you know how to get out of the slumps. Even when you get stuck on the metaphorical bench of life, even when no one else believes in you, you know how to find the determination and strength within yourself to work your way out, and you know things are never as unfixable as you think.

Playing sports in high school is one of the best things you can do because of all the memories you make and things you accomplish. It's always fun to look back on all the good memories you made and remember how much fun you had, and now, hopefully you can look back on the not-so-fun memories and see how even those experiences enhance your life even today. Then, you can enjoy the thought that you will never again have to do punishment runs for dropping a fly ball.