Vince Lombardi once said, “The quality of one’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence...” I agree with Mr. Lombardi on this in that in order to be the best you can be, you must commit yourself to that and strive for it. Being a student athlete in high school taught me to have the drive and gave me the skills to commit myself to excellence. High school sports are invaluable as they force kids to mature and use time management, develop teamwork, and give you a ridiculous amount of work ethic. As a junior in high school, I’ve been on the swim team for three years, played softball for one, ran track for one, and gained a lot of experience as a student athlete and I value the countless …show more content…
Athletes are constantly waking up early for morning practice, getting ready at school, going to classes, and then still having to go to practice after school too. After that you get to either go to another activity, such as dance or church, and then you can go home and do a few hours of homework. As you can see there is no time to waste and you have to put every second to use. Whether it be studying vocab words while you stretch or doing homework between dance classes, there is never time wasted because there can’t be. High school sports force kids to use their time wisely, which is necessary later in life at college and in the …show more content…
I now know what it feels like to really work hard for something and how great the pay-off can be. Swimming taught me to work harder than everyone else and push through the pain, the exhaustion, whatever it may be, and persevere to get results. I learned what it feels like to get a real reward and win and how much it takes to get there. An example of this was my sophomore year when my team went undefeated conference and sectional champions and placed high at state. The summer before my junior year, the best swimmer on the team, (state runner-up), moved to a new city and our team experienced a huge loss. Everyone on the team immediately knew how hard we were going to have to work and there was no question on the expectations we set for ourselves. Sadly, our coach didn’t have those same expectations. She didn’t expect us to win and barely paid attention to us. So we set out to prove her wrong. We made up for her lack as a coach, and pushed harder in sets, lifted more weight, and gave more inspiration to each other than she ever did as a coach. We gave each other hope, and when we lost to our rivals by three points, we came back with vengeance at the conference meet and won by over forty. Having been defeated and lacking support from our coach, is what gave us the drive to go out and prove her and everyone else wrong. Sometimes in life your hard work doesn’t pay off, but eventually it will, and when it does it makes it all