What impact do sports have on you?

Growing up I’ve never been good at anything except annoying my older sister. School has got to be my all-time weakest spot. My brother, who is two years younger than me, has grown up liking and playing soccer. So I thought I’d try it out to see if I like it, which I did not enjoy at all. I like watching baseball, softball and even basketball, but me personally playing sports involving balls have never really worked out for me being able to play. When I was in the seventh grade I found out about track.  I thought it’d be neat to sign up and give it a shot. Later on, when track season came around in the 8th grade, I decided to join, turned out I really liked it and was somewhat good at it.  I even joined my freshman year. Only it wasn’t as much fun because it was more work. I had my reasons to why I had joined track from the start. I am a happy girl who always looks at the positive side except when I started my freshman year, for some reason I rarely looked on the positive side. I had more bad days then I did good. I had bad days my 8th-grade year as well, they just weren’t as bad as freshman year. I used track to motivate me, to help me not focus on the negative. At a race you’re not supposed to focus on anything except that race, you always look forward, never look back, so the only thing that was on my mind was being able to get to that finish line and to finish strong. Joining track actually happened to help me out when I was I was going through a rough stage in my life, I wasn’t the fastest and I wasn’t the best, but I enjoyed running and meeting the goals I had set for myself, to ignore the negative things in life. 

I interviewed two students for their stories on the impact of sports in their lives. First, a male senior who is in cross country, track and field. Second, a female sophomore who does volleyball, and cheer. 

Cross Country / Track and Field –

“How have sports impacted me at school and at home? Well to begin with doing sports has helped me get over my depression I have had since 2012. I’ve never been diagnosed with depression but that was because I didn’t want anyone to know that I was depressed so I joined a soccer club during that time. Soccer has made me release all the anger I have and let me relax. Like when I’m on the field my mind gets blank and when I go home to study I end up doing a lot better. Soccer isn’t the only thing that has made my depression go away. Cross country and track and field has made me become a better person. When I joined Cross country my sophomore year I thought I couldn’t be good at running more than 1 mile. I’m glad I did cross country because I learned that people do care in this world and I when I went home after being sore from practice I would be a lot more excited to go to school every day because I knew that no one else could do what I do. I let out all my anger and turned into motivation to get better at sports. My friends told me “how did you improve so much in just 3 months?” and I told them “well I used the pain of loss and regret to make myself better. I used what people said to me to get better. When someone told me I couldn’t do it, worked hard and I proved them wrong. The same concept applies to track and field. I started track and field my sophomore year after cross country season was over and I became a distance runner I would go to the practices and improve by great lengths. I am so proud of all the people who gave me hate and no support because without them I wouldn’t be where I am today and that’s near the top. This year I plan to show everyone who has told me I can’t win 1st place in the mile race because of a certain person and I tell them this “keep talking only the race can prove who the winner is and who the losers are. No one has the advantage during a race. All there is in a race is who will be the best and nothing else”. So in the end sports was my reason to get out of depression and help me become who I am today without sports I would be in a deeper problem than I would want to be in. I feel 15x better running a sport that’s extremely hard on your body without the risk of breaking your bones than to be playing a dangerous sport like soccer or football since running is just stress in your mind and not in your body.” – Luis Merlos

Volleyball / Cheer –

“Doing sports has helped me through tough times where I am just so frustrated and angry. I let it all out and I start becoming aggressive. In cheer, while stunting, if I can’t manage to get my flyer up there the coaches tell me to be aggressive and throw my flyer up in the air with the strength in my legs. I usually just get all my anger out after that by throwing the flyer up. When I used to play volleyball I would spike the ball as hard as I could because all the anger in me would accumulate and that’s how I got the power to get it to the other side and just smack it. Sports have helped me because I let all the anger in me out and it makes me feel 10x better than I was before.” -anonymous