There is no doubt that sports change lives. Sports have changed mine and I am not even done yet. With sports, everyone starts at a different point. Some kids start as soon as they can walk, some in elementary school. But some kids do not get the opportunity to play until high school. I did not get to start until high school. When I was younger my family moved a lot and both my parents had full-time jobs. This left little time for my sister or me to do sports. 

Freshman year, I decided I wanted to try swim, I had done the standard swim lessons before, but I had never swum competitively before so it was a shot in the dark on if I would be any good at it. I had no idea all the places it would take me! I go to a small rural school, so there were very few girls on the team, which allowed me to swim a good amount at meets. My freshman year I qualified for districts (barely) even though I did not place at Districts. This was more than I expected since it had been my first year swimming. By my junior year I got first at Districts and ended up qualifying for State in my individual events. When I signed up to swim my freshman year, I had no idea how far I would go. Swimming not only taught me discipline and the importance and hard work but also gave me friendships that I would never have had otherwise.  

Because of COVID, I only got a three-week season of softball in 8th grade, but from the  moment I started I was hooked, and knew I wanted to play it in high school. Unlike swimming, softball had a lot of girls, and most of them had been playing since they were little, so entering my freshman year without ever playing before was challenging but thankfully I had an amazing coach on JV that helped me to become the player I am today. Now I am in my junior year of softball, and I am starting on Varsity which would not be possible without my amazing JV Coach my freshman year. Softball is a team sport, so it has shaped a different part of me than swimming. For Softball I had to learn teamwork and patience and how to just let things go and  move on to the next play.  

There have been many times that I have felt behind in my sports career, especially when all the people around me have been playing their whole lives, but I am thankful every day that I decided to play high school sports. High school sports can shape every kid who plays into a better person by integrating team-building skills, hard work, good ethics, teamwork, and physical well-being into their everyday life during and after high school. High school sports have made me a better person in sports and in life, so even though I started “late,” I am thankful I started.