I think it started for all of us when we were five years old, in our YMCA Basketball t-shirts and at peewee football and soccer camps put on by the local high school or college. That's when we all realized, we wanted to be like the people who were teaching us. For some, the goal was to play at the high school level, take the team to state and call it good. For others, however, that was only the beginning of the ultimate goal.
I remember being seven years old and at one of my very first basketball camps, my local high school, the one that my cousin and all my other idols played for. I remember how much I loved it and how much I loved showing them how hard I could work. Sure, I wasn't the best or most skillful out there, but I worked and I worked hard. And that got me places. It got me my first Lisa Leslie poster that is still hung on the back of my bedroom door back home. The one that I looked at every day and what showed me that if she could be the first woman to dunk a ball, I was capable of going as far as I worked for.
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If I could count the amount of hours I spent on a basketball court, indoor or outdoor, I would eventually lose track. Because it still was the same story for me even 10 years later; I may not have been the most skilled or most athletic, but I would be the one that put in the most time and effort.
Anyone who has ever had the goal to play at the next level knows this same amount of dedication. It is what you eat and what you breathe. You go to sleep every night thinking about it and you wake up every morning thinking about it. You spend your evenings writing letters, editing game film, and selling yourself to college coaches. Only to get an automated response generated by some system, or no reply at all.
Then one day, you get an email back.
Someone wants you.
You finally start waking up in the morning without the feeling of a thousand pound weight pressing down on your chest. There is no more worry, distress, or anxiety. You did it. You made it.
However, you really haven't made it. You still have no idea what is ahead of you; what exactly playing a collegiate sport entails.
When collegiate athletes sign their commitment papers, they are signing away their lives. They are signing away their Thanksgiving, Christmas, their sister’s birthday, and the birth of their niece. But they don't hesitate before putting the pen to paper, because it still is what they eat sleep and breathe. And they are reminded of this at every waking moment of every day. It is a full time, 24/7, 365 days a year job.
There are days when practice runs two hours over the original time, and there still is a meal to be cooked and three chapters worth of biology waiting for you at home. There are mornings when your feet hit the floor and you genuinely contemplate how you are going to make it through another day, another practice. Every morning you wake up, you wonder if it is physically possible for your body to hurt more than it does in that moment, and it does, every single morning.
There are days when you call your parents, and when they ask you how you are holding up and adjusting, you simply are too tired to delve into the fact that you haven’t eaten anything other than eggs and granola bars in the past three weeks.
There are days, actually every single day, where you are in a sweat suit that is beginning to smell like your gear bag, when the guy sitting next to you in your 8:00 a.m. English class shows an extreme face of concern, because he doesn’t know you’ve already been up for five hours.
There are moments halfway through practice when you look at the door and legitimately contemplate making a run for it, because if you get your ass ripped to shreds one more time, you may actually self combust.
There are days when you dream of what a normal life would be like; to get done with classes for the day and go home and get to do whatever you wish, to actually have time to do your homework, or binge-watch Netflix, or eat something other than eggs for dinner. To live a normal life.
And there are days when the doctor comes in with your MRI scan and tells you that its time to give it up; it is time to walk away from everything that has made you who you are.
So hear me when I tell you this, living a normal life sucks. Figuring out who you are again, going to games and knowing that would have been you, not being able to easily run 10 suicides anymore, saying goodbye to a team that has become your second-family, and not having a court or field to retreat to at the end of the day, is actual torture.
So enjoy it while you still have it. Enjoy the five-hour practices, the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks spent with your teammates, the early mornings, the ass chewing, and everything in between.
Because no matter what you do and where you go in life, it will always be what you eat, sleep, and breathe, and you should be so incredibly proud of yourself for that.
