Personally, I cannot imagine my life without sports. Since I was 3 years old, I have been kicking around a soccer ball. My family set our nightly schedules around when UNC basketball was on and my afternoons in high school were rushing from one practice directly to the next one. I can’t imagine my childhood any other way, and I love that.

If I had to pick a singular thing about sports that I love the most it would have to be the competition. A little healthy competition is not a bad thing; often the greatest competition is with myself and that has helped me become a better person on and off the field. In soccer games, it forced me to chase down every single ball. It pushed me to run faster than I ever thought I could to beat the girl in the lane beside me. It drove me to be the best I could be on whatever team I was on- for my teammates and for myself. Off the field, that competitive drive still pushes me in even the smallest and mundane areas of my life. I challenge myself to accomplish tedious tasks, perform my best academically, and put my best step forward in any endeavor.

From sports I also learned perseverance. No matter how talented you may be in whatever it is you do, you are not always going to have a natural affinity or be the best. Most of the time you are going to have to work for what you want. No matter how good you are you will mess up; someone will be better and occasionally you will fail. The sports I picked up in high school did not come easily to me and I was easily frustrated by the slightest mistake and distraught by a loss. I worked at them, though, and being a part of those teams were some of my most enjoyable experiences throughout high school. You learn that when you put time and effort in, it pays off. You improve and all that time and effort you spent becomes worth every second.

One of the hardest lessons I learned was mental toughness. Cross country is a great example of that. When I say I felt like I might die, that often was not an exaggeration. That didn’t matter, though. On my first day of cross country practice as a freshman one of the older girls joked that there were still bodies of girls in the woods whom our coach had witnessed walking during practice. At the time I nervously laughed at that, but as the season went on I began to realize that it wasn’t fear of our coach that kept us going. It was the realization that we could do it. Not accomplishing what we knew we could accomplish was weak. Through practice and through meets you kept going. Through stress fractures, cramps, dehydration, pulled muscles, and gasping for air you kept going. I learned my body was capable of so much more than I thought possible. I learned that nearly everything in life is not about your physical ability, but your mental strength. If you decide that you are not going to stop no matter how hard, uncomfortable, painful, or impossible it seems, you can succeed in just about anything.

I never thought about sports as something solely of brawn and for “jocks.” They were as much, if not more so, about personal growth. They were what shaped most of my life and the tears of frustration, injuries, anger, and beads of sweat were worth every second.