I’ve been an athlete, or at least considered myself one, for as long as I can remember. My dad taught me how to swing a baseball bat as soon as I had learned to walk, and took me along with my older brothers for batting practice by the time I was three-years-old. Before I knew what it meant to be myself, sports and the world they encompassed were already integral to my sense of identity.

Growing up, I continued to play baseball, basketball and football all the way through high school, eventually picking up crew as well during my freshman year. Crew came to eat away at the time demands of other sports, eventually becoming my sole focus, with opportunities to row at the college level even being one of the main factors leading me to enroll at Rollins.

At Rollins, I embraced the love-hate relationship with the title of “Student Athlete,” refusing to listen to non-athlete’s complaints about lack of time or lack of sleep. It was a pedestal as much as it was a burden, and I loved every second of it. Every weekend traveling and writing papers on the bus, every fitness test and every night out with a 6 a.m. practice on the horizon felt just like the comfort zone I had craved and found in sports my whole life. Until, before I had truly had a chance to appreciate it, it was torn away.

I started noticing a growing pain in my right knee early into our spring season. It grew worse and worse as I continued to train, convinced that it was just another obstacle and that I could tough it out like athletes are so often taught to do. However, after a few weeks, I could tell that it wasn’t. The run to practice alone left me limping daily into the boathouse and down the dock. I told my coach, met with trainers and started biking to practice. Eventually even that became too painful.

So I stopped biking and I stopped rowing. Instead I drove. I drove to practice while my teammates ran. In transitioning to role of coxswain, I learned to drive boats instead of move them.

I came to hate driving.

The diagnosis was Patella-Femoral Syndrome. It’s an injury, not uncommonly found in rowers, where the thigh muscles pull the kneecap too far upwards when the joint is bent. However, my youth sports career, in combination with the duration of my time rowing, had also degraded the cartilage in my knee to near non-existence and caused the kneecap to crunch and grind against my femur as it pulled upwards. I was told the only surgery that would solve the problem completely would be a knee replacement, and that physical therapy would help, but not restore my knee to competition-ready condition.

All of a sudden, I wasn’t an athlete anymore. I was just a person, just a student. I felt like an actor stripped of a prized role, a detective taken off the case of his career, like a Scooby-Doo villain that would’ve gotten away with it if weren’t for my meddling knee. Most of all, I felt like a stranger to myself and that scared me. Who am I if not an athlete?

It’s a big question. It’s a question that haunted me for months after I stopped rowing, and one that I am just starting to really reconcile and begin to answer. It’s strange to look back on sports instead of seeing them in the present, but there’s an appreciation gained in hindsight that I lacked while I was competing.

Life as an athlete taught me patience, self control and focus. It gave me my first taste of passion and drive, showing me what they looked like, what they felt like. It made me goal oriented, diligent and disciplined. It showed me my limits or what I thought my limits were, and then showed me repeatedly how capable I was of breaking them. It taught me a deep appreciation for the presence and help of others, for camaraderie, teamwork and friendship. Reflecting on what I learned on the field and in the boat, I can’t help but see opportunities to integrate all of it elsewhere.

I don’t know what life as a non-athlete will be like. I do not know all challenges it will bring, but I know that the life I’ve had to leave behind has prepared me for all of them. The road ahead is long and I don’t have a map, but, slowly and surely, I am learning to love driving again.