Life Lessons Learned

As humans we unconsciously learn life lessons every day of our lives. Some of the lessons could've been taught by teachers or by parents. No matter what, there will always be certain life lessons we carry with us for the rest of our lives. Majority of the life lessons I learned happened to come from my eleven years of playing hockey. Most people would read that and think I'm crazy that hockey could possible teach me about the hardships of life and how to handle it. But I'm not as crazy as most people might think. It all started when I was seven years old and learning to skate. Since I've never ice skated prior to then, I would constantly be falling down over and over again. At a certain point I just wanted to give up because it was too hard. Instead I kept being persistent and going to my lessons and about 3 months later I was put onto a hockey team with other kids my age. Learning to skate and playing hockey have taught me that I'm going to fail but there's no shame in failing as long as you keep trying.
As I got older and the other kids were getting bigger it was more frightening to play a contact sport since I wasn't that heavy of a kid.
I had to constantly avoid getting hit or else when I did, I wouldn't be able to breathe afterwards. It wasn't until I realized that I'm much faster than those bigger kids that I started using it as an advantage. Typically my weight made me lighter and quicker on my feet so I could fly past the larger players. Since speed was my speciality and what I was good at, I kept using it all through the rest of my time playing the sport. So I learned that if what I do is better than what others can, then I'm not going to adjust the way I play to accommodate
them. Recently I've also learned how to be more of a leader toward my teams after being named captain of my high school team my junior year. I've never really seen myself as much of a leader but when I was asked to be captain I gladly stepped into the role. I wasn't the type of captain that would yell at my teammates or constantly blame them for the mistakes going on in the game. Instead, I was the captain who would help the players and give them bits of advice, but most of all I would lead by example and play my heart out. That's what made me more mature than the other captains and I believe it benefited the team more than if I was yelling at them. Now that I'm going into my final season, possibly ever, of playing hockey; I see my team as more of a family. Which is important when you're with the same people every day for hours on end. I don't believe we can be successful if we're all off doing our own thing. We need to come together as a team to create an amazing season after dealing with the failure of last year, which was our first as a varsity team and we didn't win a game. The final lesson I learned from playing hockey is that your teammates are like a family and they only want to see you improve, so you should cherish these people because they can teach you a lot about life. So yes, most of my life lessons I've learned have come from hockey. I don't see that as a bad thing, rather it is the best thing to happen to me. Of course I've learned other things from adults. I just believe that what I've learned playing the sport I love will stick with me for the rest of my life.