As a former year-round athlete, a world without sports is difficult to imagine. After two years off the trails, track, and out of the pool, the nostalgia grows greater each time the hour I used to routinely prepare for practice passes once again.
Two years since I've laced up my shoes and put on my uniform, the love for my sport still lingers. As I said, my world without competitive sports is difficult to imagine. But now that I've had to, I've realized my world without my teammates is harder to imagine..and even harder to endure.
I dreamed as if my career as an athlete would be never-ending, and failed to remind myself that one day the practices end, the games stop, the competition ceases, and the only thing that would remain are the memories you helped to create. So here's to the people that made years of hard practices, early alarms on the weekends, and late weeknight games that much more memorable.
I learned to hate when coach would say, "Today is going to be a fun practice," because it meant practice will be the farthest thing from enjoyable, but I learned to look at you and smile because you were going to be practicing in hell with me.
For the moments when physical exhaustion seeped into my bones, I learned to look toward you to hear screams and cheers from the sidelines that never failed to push me further.
The "obnoxious" hops, jumps, skips, and screams of pure joy after excelling both as a team and an individual weren't obnoxious in retrospect. They were well deserved.
We bonded over complaints to coach, over plates and plates of spaghetti in order to carbo-load, shared pregame and post-game snacks, plates and plates of food because we deserved to treat ourselves, over blaring pump-up songs on the long bus rides, and over more food because what else is to be expected of athletes.
I never thanked you for all the hair ties you let me borrow but never saw again, the times you would share your favorite snack with me, or when you would be my personal pillow on the hour-long bus ride.
I never thanked you for the nicknames you created for me, the inside jokes that could only be understood by you, or my weirdness that you openly accepted and partook in.
I most certainly never thanked you for being happy to see me at the crack of dawn, no makeup on, sweating, smelly, maybe bruised or bloody, and on the verge of puking.
You made it all bearable.You made it all memorable. You made it everything it was for me.
I loved my sport, but I loved it more because of you.
I would do a lot to put my jersey on one last time, but I would go to the ends of the earth to put my jersey on one last time alongside you.
