NARP: acronym Non-Athletic Regular Person.

I wasn't the most athletic person before, but at least I did more than what my current college life consists of. I played field hockey for seven years and for some reason, my brain thought it would be okay to drop the sport that I loved for so long when I reached college. Now that I am without my sport, I've grown into a lifestyle that I never saw myself in. I was able to run a mile or two and not particularly blink about it, maybe go to weight training here and there on off season. Now, thinking about all of that I just groan and roll over to take yet another nap. I mean, what happened?!

I could spend all of my days preparing for my next game or start training for the season and now I work towards nothing. There's this emptiness fulfilling no physical goal. I don't have a game get ready for and I no longer have to review those front line girls who I've been studying for years. Sure, now I do my Fitbit challenges with friends but most days, that's not even enough motivation to push me because I can always hit 10,000 steps tomorrow. There's no deadline to it. With my sport, I had to make sure that I was prepared for that game on Friday. I mean now, if someone allowed me, most days my wrist would just look like this..

Let's be real here, dropping a sport that was once so precious to you is never an easy thing. Maybe it was done with good intentions, like for academics. I know there are many people out there just like me who are carrying on with their NARP life who occasionally think about returning to their sacred field and it is the best thing we can do. Maybe not join a team but maybe run a few laps, work on old tricks, throw some oil in our gears and let us not forget that little kid inside of us. Don't leave this game all together, play every now and again for that kid who fell in love with it. Do it for yourself. You may have had one bad practice here and there but at some point you loved that game with even your smallest fiber.