There comes a time when every athlete realizes the life lessons that they have learned through sports. Growing up, you encounter many new challenges that influence you as an athlete and a person which help you grow. It is these moments in which we learn how to be a better version of ourselves. It’s the small lessons which make being on a sports team so valuable and make us realize why we still love playing the game.
Perseverance
At times when you feel like giving up, sports teach you to dig deep and keep going. Fighting for what you want is important. Playing sports allows you to create an emotional attachment to the concept of winning, alongside sportsmanship, and this perseverance is what helps you push forward in all aspects of your life. If you are willing to work hard for something, you have learned the power of perseverance. No matter the challenges you face or falls you take, you will never fail to keep working harder.
Patience
In both athletics and everyday life, we learn that things don’t always come easy. As an athlete, sports teach the ability to be patient, because if you keep working at something and believing in yourself, your skills will prove themselves.
Teamwork
In sports, whether it is individual competition or team competition, the people that support you and follow along side in the same or similar journey are so important. Sport teaches you to appreciate these teammates, be there for them and work together to push the unit beyond the best of their abilities. Nothing can teach teamwork the way sports can.
Confidence
Confidence is something that can be tricky because it is often inconsistent, as it is likely that there are some moments in which you feel infinitely more confident than others. What is important though, is that by using the lessons you’ve learned through being an athlete, sports allow you to be confident in other areas of your life. Even on the days when confidence is hard to come by on the field, the sense of general confidence that has been learned through sports is underlying everything you do!
Competition
From a young age, competition is instilled into children through sports. We develop the motivation to compete and win, learning that through competition you will become stronger as an athlete and individual. There are times in which the greatest competition is within one’s own head, or on one’s own team, changing the traditional meaning of competition to be something that fosters a process instead of only the outcome.
Humility
In sports, you are always taught to demonstrate good sportsmanship. When you win, you’re taught not to brag, and when you lose, you’re taught not to pout. But humility is also present in the way you carry yourself, as well as the way you speak to others and your willingness to help others. In sports, we learn to practice these aspects of humility every day, but the lessons taught and learned travel well beyond the endline. Humility is a trait that transcends sports, entering all areas of our lives.
This is what we as two, young college athletes have learned. What have sports taught you? Why do you participate?