It happens to the best of us. We put our blood, sweat, and tears into playing sports. We get to high school and put up the best stats on the team, praised by our coaches, loved by our teammates, and encouraged by the fans. Sooner or later, those moments can end and before you know it it's time to pack up and head off to college with a swollen head and a boatload of confidence. If you are anything like me, you would've already been in contact with plenty of college coaches. Ones who've told you how great you are and how much you're going to help their teams. So, we get to the first day of try-outs, just to get blindsided by the amount of competition there is and how fast the level of play is at the college level. Everything is a blur and far too overwhelming until time seems to stop...when you read that posted list without your name on it, or get that dreaded email that tells you that you're not invited to come back to practice.
At that moment...it's over. Everything you worked for is all for nothing. You think about all the people you have let down and where you went wrong. You're lost. I know the feeling because it happened to me, and like I said, it happens to the best of us. I know what it feels like to get through the hardship and make the best of it.
When I first got cut from my college team, it was via email and I remember the moment vividly. I refreshed the page and checked my email probably a hundred times in the span of 2 hours. My girlfriend was patiently waiting for my phone call as she was successfully pursuing her dreams in playing college basketball for a small community college back home. Chances are that you had a very similar situation in your encounter. You had the utmost confidence in your try-out performance and when the email shows that you're cut, you literally go into shock. The world stops turning, and you can't seem to process what you have read and re-read around a hundred times. At that moment, I could have taken the news a few ways. I could have gotten pissed off and freaked out, walked around like the coach doesn't know what he is talking about, and say I got screwed during the try-out. I could have sulked and stayed in bed all day for a few weeks. Or I could have handled it the right way and used it as my motivation to rise above the situation I was in. Luckily, I took the news the right way and used it as motivation, and I hope you do the same.
Now in my case, I thought I failed myself. I printed the email and posted in on my wall right next to my bed. Every night I would fall to sleep with a lasting image of an email that told me that I wasn't good enough with my handwriting that had "FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION" written in red. To me, it was motivation. It told me to not only give my best but to go further than my best because obviously what I thought was my best, was just simply not good enough. From there I tried to make myself better than everyone else. As a freshman I went above and beyond and locked down internships and excelled in my major. I took the adversity and turned it into a positive and that is exactly what you need to do too,
As a closing remark, I just want to leave you with this. Even though you didn't make your college team, you're still an athlete. You still have the competitive drive that got you the stats in high school, use that competitiveness to get the grades and opportunities in college. Finally, I don't consider you a failure if you get cut from your team and neither should you. But if you do get cut, don't give up. Get out there and make a name for yourself and instead of it being on the back of a jersey, make it on the bottom of a paycheck.
