I got involved in sports when I was in seventh grade.

I started with managing equipment for the football team and basketball team. My path led me to football and basketball equipment management in high school, and upon graduation, I went to college with a partial scholarship to be a football equipment manager.

While I never played a down or a minute of a game, I was there for every practice and every game for 13 years. Upon my college graduation, I worked for a youth sports franchise that provided flag football, soccer, basketball and T-ball leagues to kids 4 to 15 years old.

Sports have played an extremely important role in my life, and I can honestly say being involved in so many sports helped shape who I am and gave me valuable knowledge for my career.

1. Being a team player.

You learn how to be a team player — hands down, the best way to experience your role and how it impacts others is to be on a team. When you don’t do your job, it negatively affects the rest of the team. When you excel at your assignment, and everyone else does also, you make big plays and can ultimately win the game.

2. Did someone say "road trip?"

You get to travel. Road games. Hard playing environments. Adversity in an unfamiliar area. On a more positive note, you have the opportunity to represent your school or team in a place that’s not your home court or field. I know when I traveled with teams, road games involved a little more planning because you don’t have your home facilities to run to if you forget something. Many athletes would agree with me; we all still get the biggest kick out of winning on someone else’s turf.

3. You learn time management.

You have to manage practices, a tenacious game schedule and not to forget to mention going to class and making good grades. If you're good, you'll have a great social life with your friends. It's not easy. You have to make sacrifices. You ultimately have to decide what's important to you.

4. Be a good sport!

Your coaches will teach you motivation and sportsmanship. They'll teach you how to dig deep and push through fatigue and being tired, how to win with class and lose with grace, how to do things right and instill in you that nothing less than your best is acceptable.

5. Cool swag man!

Oh, I did mention you get to wear cool team swag? Take the University of Oregon’s football team for instance. They have over 530 different uniform combinations. If they played a 10-game schedule, it would take them 53 years to wear all of them.

That’s a lot of uniform combinations.