Like many people, after I graduated high school, I decided that I would leave sports behind and focus on my academics. I wasn’t a top recruit, but I could have played in college. However, I knew I wasn’t going to become a professional athlete, so I looked at college as a way to focus on my future career. What I didn’t know then was that sports would be the thing I missed most about high school.
Once you graduate high school, they tell you you’ll miss your friends. They say you’ll miss the free books, the home-cooked meals, and the amount of school work. But they never tell the athletes truly how much you will miss the game.
You’ll miss the lack of free time.
For athletes, like me, who seemed to always be in season the transition to college is difficult. You go from always being busy, to having what sometimes feels like too much free time. In high school, I was jealous of my friends who got home at 3:30, while I was stuck at school until 7 or 8 each night, forced to be up late into the night to finish my homework. But, now, I miss being busy and having a strict schedule laid out for me.
You’ll miss the competition.
Although you can find competition outside of sports, it never seems to be the same. There is competition in the classroom against your peers, or in a job interview against other prospective employees, but these things will never have the same effects that physical competition has on athletes.
Sports give you feelings that nothing else can. The satisfaction one receives when they beat their rival high school in the big homecoming game, or the high one gets from a double overtime win cannot be achieved anywhere else. The nerves you get when your name is called on the intercom for the starting line-up may seem meaningless now, but trust me, you’ll miss it.
You’ll miss your coaches.
What you’ll miss the most are your teammates and your coaches. A coach to an athlete is a mentor and a role model. At the time you might have hated your coaches. You couldn’t stand when they would blow their whistle, marking yet another suicide to run or yells at you for being a minute late. Looking back, you’ll see that all your coaches were only making you a better person.
You'll miss your teammates.
The ones who sweat with you after every run; the ones who cry with you after every big loss; the ones who compare bruises with you after each game. This is what you will miss the most after your high school sports career ends. For an entire season your teammates share the majority of their time with you. They pick you up after a fall, and are there with you to celebrate a goal, touchdown, or basket. They make the hour long bus rides to away games some of your fondest memories of high school. You may never find a truer friend than someone who also once your teammate.
Do not take your high school sports for granted. If I could go back I would appreciate my busy schedule, my nerves before every game, and my coaches and teammates so much more than I did. I loved playing volleyball, basketball, and soccer, but my love for these sports grew much stronger after I had to give them up. The saying goes you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, so cherish your time on the court or field, you won’t be there forever.
