“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is a phrase that stays true to everyone especially during your freshman year of highschool. When I was fourteen, my baseball team went to a spring showdown baseball tournament. Spring showdowns have always been my favorite type of tournament since I played 10u travel ball. Although now I have a different perspective on these tournaments. On the way home from this particular tournament my face look like a baboons buttocks, with a big red swollen eye that was surrounded by brown and purple bruise. This was from a fouled off baseball, and I will never forget the event or the decisions I had to make. As a freshman I had to learn how to make educated, courageous, and tough life decisions.…
Putting the thought of winning can help with a player’s determination to win. That positive energy gets released and other teammates can feel the same positive vibes and all pull together to win the game.In the game of sports, any to be exact. The game can be very competitive. Which isn’t a bad thing, it actually encourages many to win the game, especially when their extremely determined.…
braced themselves for the dawn of a new era. Black and white students would be playing on the same football…
I would describe myself as a very athletic, outdoorsy type of person. I played hockey for about eight years but I quit my sophomore year because I just didn’t really have that enthusiastic…
As a fourth grader, being told that “winning isn’t everything” was a little hard to believe. Only recently do I realize how true this statement is and how important it is to learn this. I believe that in playing sports, what is most important is improving oneself, working as a team, and demonstrating good sportsmanship. Playing CBAA basketball has taught me these values and has played a large role in shaping me into the humble and compassionate person that I am today.…
Jim Thompson wrote, ”Sports provide an endless procession of teachable moments, which can be obscured by a win at all cost mentality.” I will explained with the information I have been given and with the information I already have. Sports, as I mentioned before, they can help in many different ways. For example, work when you are working and you stumble upon a problem that you can’t fix by yourself. You ask for help which is teamwork and collaboration. Jim Thompson Jim Thompson exclaimed, ”All distractions from the big picture life lessons that can include teachable spirit, resilience, grit, self confidence, teamwork, determination and empathy.” Finally one of the biggest and most important thing there is, don’t be selfish because you will ruined the point of the game for you and your teammates and then the point of the game will be for nothing no teamwork, no leadership and no…
Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday. Do you know who spoke these wise words? A fascinating athlete, that goes by the name Wilma Rudolph.…
Sweat dripped of my face as the third quarter came to an end. Fatigue in my muscles made every step feel like climbing a flight of stairs. My body ached when I heard the loud horn, signifying the end of the quarter.…
Playing Ice Hockey was a burning passion of mine. It all started in the cold and dense locker room. Practice had just finished up and we were inside the locker room getting undressed. I was a forward on the team and was only ten years old. The team goalie was sick and was not going to be able to make our game the next day. Coach asked “Is anyone willing to play goalie for our game?” and I, the young ten year old boy I was; was the first person to quickly respond saying “I will!” Playing goalie was destined for me, I was a star and very talented.…
Even though I am considered a skilled and impressive player, the game I love is all about failure. Players that fail seventy percent of the time are considered to be the best in the world. So this is where I developed the skill of mental toughness that I apply in life and baseball. In the summer of 2016, my high school baseball team made it to the state playoffs where the top teams played. College coaches were at the games along with hundreds of other fans. In our semi-final game, we were winning three-to-two…
My parents always made sure they put me in every sport I wanted to keep their chubby-cheeked, energized, wide-eyed five year old happy. I’m sure they’d do just about anything to keep me from throwing my famous slamming door tantrums. I participated in youth soccer, dance class, t-ball, basketball and probably a couple others as well. My dreams of becoming a professional athlete were certainly in the makings.…
I know it’s really cliché to say this because pretty much everybody plays at least one sport, but I find joy in my athletic abilities and in sports as a whole. I personally play soccer and basketball, but I have played all different kinds of sports for fun. I play many different sports to make me a better athlete and to try something new. My favorite sports experience is at McCallie Sports Camp in Chattanooga, Tennessee every summer. I'm going for my sixth and final year this summer, and I cannot wait. At McCallie, you are emerged in all different kinds of sports. Whether you're good at them or not doesn't matter. I have played many awesome sports at McCallie that I may never play anywhere else like water polo and flickerball. Overall, McCallie made me a better athlete and expanded my horizons in the sports realm.…
Field hockey has taught me some of the basic values of life and has changed my morals as well. I learned to respect all players, coaches and referees. I learned that I can be a good player and play hard – yet, still be courteous and kind on the playing field. This sport has taught me how to love myself, my teammates, and to become the best athlete I can be, through important lessons that I can incorporate on and off the field. It will hold a place in my heart even after I can no longer suit up to play in my stinky goalie gear, and I will always appreciate…
At some point in life everyone has experienced success, but how often do you succeed on your first attempt? It is everyone’s dream to be successful, but this success is very rarely given to anyone, everyone has hurdles to get over and their own set of trials and tribulations. What is really important in life are the lessons learned from these events, teaching you more about yourself and the task in which you are attempting to be successful in, and there is no better teacher than failure. Like everyone else, failure has played a large part in my learning process. Teaching me a lot about myself, and also teaching me how to make myself better. One of the main areas I have used my failures to better myself has been in my athletic career, weather it is boxing, racing, or basketball, failure has been a constant motivator in my ultimate goal, which is to be successful, and the absolute best I can possibly be. Since birth athletics have been a major part of my life. Taking up almost all of my free time away from school, and work. Spending my first term of the 2008-2009 school year as a member of the Iowa State Men’s Basketball Practice Squad as a walk on, but with all of my back breaking work, which lead to that point, I would never have gotten this opportunity without, at some point, dealing with failures. Failures in Basketball were frequent, dealing with new lessons learned from these events on a daily basis. This learning process all began in the early stages of elementary school, where I began my first season playing for Wildwood Elementary here in Ottumwa. During this first season I cost my team many of our first games, because of my extremely selfish play, refusing to use the team that had been put on the court with me. Within the first month I was pulled out of the starting lineup, and spent much of my next few weeks with limited playing time, but continuously improving my passing abilities, and frequency. At the time of this lesson, I didn’t fully understand…
My first experience that I chose to support the quote deals with my favorite sport, irish dance. After dancing for close to 10 years, I have experienced this situation many times. Irish dancing is a very competitive sport, that really takes a toll on you both physically and emotionally. I know myself and many other dancers have gotten to points where we question why we still even do the sport. We get frustrated and can't even remember why we love dancing so much. I remember towards the end of last year I had one of these attitudes. Regionals was in November and I hadn’t done as well as I had wanted to. I really hadn’t put in enough effort and practice leading up to regionals. Even though I knew deep down it was really my own fault, I made excuses for myself and blamed my failure on everything but myself. I blamed my teacher for not preparing me enough. I blamed the judges for not judging correctly and I blamed about everything else I could except for me. Eventually, I had come to terms that it was my own fault, nobody else’s. Once I recognized this, I lost my bad attitude and started fresh. I now was going to put in the necessary effort to rank where I wanted to be. I realized that I was the only one who was able to make a difference in…