Trying out a new sport is a wonderful experience especially during middle and high school. It gives you the opportunity to meet new people, have fun with already existing friends, It gives you a sense of accomplishment when people cheer for you, and it keeps you active. There are many sports out there that you should try and experience while having fun with others who enjoy that very same sport
When I started playing football I had already played soccer and basketball before that and I never enjoyed playing either of them because others already played it when they were younger so they were always better and more active than me. But when I began playing football I realized that me being new to the sport wasn’t a disadvantage at all. Even though I was barely active in my childhood, football gave me a better chance to do what I did not do before. Through my coaches and teammates I was able to find a place where I didn’t need past experience to be good at it.
In football camp I met many new people, some even from my hometown, who pushed me to constantly improve my skills and talent. When we ran our conditioning I was always the last to finish and they still encouraged me to keep going. Through June and July they helped me grow and always kept me from giving up midway through.
While finding a new sport and sticking with it is a giant commitment and hard work it will push you to your absolute limits and keep you growing and active not only physically but your mind too. Over time your mindset will grow along with how you learn from your mistakes each time you play, making your body adapt to that one failure. And as your mind learns from each loss, each mistake, and every lost opportunity you start to make less and less mistakes each time. You play until you’re close to being perfect in that sport. Not only did that encouragement help me see the value of playing football it also opened my eyes to trying more than one new sport.
Trying out a sport, any sport, is a wonderful way to connect with people and form bonds with them that can last many years. Those bonds get you through losses so that you never feel that you didn’t do enough to win and they make sure you can talk to others about it. The friendships you make along the way playing sports help to keep you and your teammates together after a loss instead of breaking out into arguments. Over time you will learn how to connect with more and more people and through those connections you will learn new things each day from those who already have that knowledge. Making this one big web of learning that is passed down to new people each year making it grow and grow until it stops growing.
Playing sports lights a candle that the player has to take to the very end while it shines bright for everyone to see. Through that journey to the end many obstacles will try to burn that candle out and only true dedication can keep it alive and in that way friends will push you to your goals making sure you don’t stop and that you don’t give up after all that hard work and time has passed. Through that blaze younger people will see your drive and light their own candle. Passing the torch on to a new group of people.
Photo Credits: Ricardo CL on Pexels
Eduardo Lopez-Carmel Catholic-DMSF Class of 2028