When most high school athletes dream of college athletics, they do not picture Division III sports. They envision scholarships, screaming fans and a college career focused on that sport. In fact, I never pictured myself as a DIII athlete. I saw Division III sports as amateur, not competitive and, frankly, not worth my time.

But I could not have been more wrong. It is so much more than “just DIII.”

Division III athletics require hard work -- waking up at 6 a.m. three days a week to lift in the off season, driving seven hours to a weekend tournament, and even throwing up after the hardest practice you've ever experienced.

It’s about the sweat dripping down your back as you get ready for another set of conditioning. It’s about pushing your body to finish the last rep in max-outs. It’s about feeling your legs reach their limit but knowing you can go further. It’s about pushing through the pain, the tears and the agony to get to the next level.

We DIII athletes do these things because we love the sport we play. We are here, pushing ourselves, because we chose to do so. We do not have a stadium filled with fans wearing our names on the backs of jerseys. We do not have scholarships encouraging us to compete next season. We don’t have a future career in the sport. We don’t have the best equipment or facilities, but we have the drive to improve. We are here because we cannot imagine our life without sports -- they are a piece of us. We are playing for passion, pride, ourselves and our teammates.

It is so much more than “just DIII.”

It’s reaching goals you never imagined possible. It’s success with your teammates. It’s forming bonds on long bus rides. It’s team dinners in cramped apartments. It’s getting the goal you’ve been working so hard toward. It’s finishing a workout you could not even imagine attempting in high school. It’s getting better. It’s pushing yourself. It’s family. It’s love for the sport.

DIII athletics give aspiring athletes the opportunity to focus on academics just as much as their sports. We are dedicated student-athletes with dreams beyond athletics. And balancing rigorous academics with athletics is not easy. I walk directly from practice to class and bring my homework on road trips. I work unbelievably hard each day because I love what I am doing.

I am a Division III athlete and I am so proud of it. I push myself every single day to achieve levels I have never seen. I spend countless hours on my sport between warm-up, practice and lifting. I am surrounded by the best people I have met, and they believe in my abilities. No one is forcing us to compete, but we show up to practice each day to get better because we love it. It’s pure passion.

Many people brush off Division III athletics as lesser quality than Division I or II, but I am here to tell you that it is more competitive and passion-driven than you could ever imagine.

We experience the struggle of less-than-satisfactory uniforms and transportation, but that doesn’t phase us. We show up every day ready to compete and get better. There are 190,000 of us in Division III, playing because we love the game.

We are so much more than “just DIII.”