Like most children now, my parents signed me up for sports at a young age. I was kicking a soccer ball down a big grass field by kindergarten, and began playing basketball shortly after. Those days of not keeping score, equal playing time and seemingly no rules allowed for us to truly play for fun. It then made it easy to fall in love with whatever sport we are playing. But it seemed as the older, we got the more that changed. The emphasis on having fun shifted to a focus on winning. Undefeated seasons, stats and scores were now the teams' main goals. It was hard not to get caught up in all the hype, to forget why I started playing sports in the first place. I played sports for the love of the game and the people.

The lessons I learned didn’t seem much like lessons at all, I just thought I was playing the games I love. Without sports I know I wouldn’t have been the team player that I had become. Each sport faced me with a unique set of challenges for me to tackle, and I loved being able to work through them. The hard work and dedication that I had learned just from trying to be the best teammate I could be easily translated into my everyday life.

Your teammates become your best friends and they always had your back. They made sure that you always had the support that you needed whether it was on the court or off. It was amazing to see how a sport could bond so many people together that would normally not have anything in common.

The frustration and the tears brought by the sports that I played made me stronger and even in some ways, more mature. I learned to stand up for myself whether if it was to a fellow teammate, an opposing player or even a coach. If I failed or made a mistake, then I worked to improve myself as a player, a valuable work ethic that helped me better my life out of sports.

Playing sports became a part of who I was. I completely embraced the term student-athlete, and I couldn’t imagine how my life would be without paying sports. In my college search, I began considering attending college as just a student and not a student-athlete. I was well aware that the academic curriculum that I was going to be taking on in college was going to be more difficult than in high school and was worried that I would struggle in school.

But I couldn’t let sports go just yet, even in college. I now am part of my university’s track and field team and couldn’t be happier. The friendships I have made with my teammates this first year will last me many years past my college graduation. I am not sure what I will do once my collegiate athletic career is over, but I will never forget all the lessons I have learned throughout these past years.