Like most collegiate athletes, I have been playing my sport for the majority of my life. I started softball when I was four and never looked back. I played all year round and you couldn’t take a bat out of my hand if you tried.
Now in my junior year of college, I am beginning to realize that this sport is quickly coming to an end. I won’t have to be up at 5 a.m. for conditioning, and I will never have to run a pole again and let me tell you that it is terrific however, I will never get to step on the field back in uniform playing for something more significant than myself.
I have always put everything into this sport, hard work, long hours, weekend trips, giving up my summers, and I gave my heart to this sport. Everyone in my high school knew me as the softball player. When softball season would come around, they knew that pictures of our games were going up on Instagram and that I would use any excuse to talk about softball. It is part of my identity, and it is the game I love to go out and play, but that’s ending in a year.
I think the hardest thing that I’m learning is that softball does not define who I am. At the end of the day, it does not matter if I make two errors in a game and go 0-3. It doesn’t matter if I go 4-4 hitting for the cycle. All that matters is that I am a good person and treat people with respect.
I think this applies to all athletes; you may have been an All- American, you may have broken records, you may have sat the bench every game of your career, but were you a selfless person? Were you a good teammate? People didn’t like you because of your playing ability, but they loved you because you were always there for them.
In the future, your sport will not be there, and you are going to have to define yourself in a new way. I will no longer walk around campus as the softball player, but I hope to be known as a genuine person. Someone who will go to great lengths for the people they love. Someone who will lend a hand to a person in need. Someone happy.
All that matter is that your spreading love and being the realist version of yourself because your sport will be gone and then that poses the question… who will you be?