How Sports Changed My Life

Throughout my life I have always been active in sports. In early years that sport was baseball but as I matured and grew older it became apparent that baseball simply was not my sport. I did not make the junior high team in seventh grade and have not played a game of baseball since. At that point in my life I was not a very athletic or active kid. Later in the seventh grade school year I heard about tryouts for the Cross Country team and decided to try it. I very quickly fell in love with the sport, but at first I was not very good. My first year on the team I was just on the team basically like a bench warmer except everyone runs in Cross Country. I decided to change that in the off season between my first and second year and I returned to

My junior season due to an injury I did not run much and mainly supported my team from the sidelines. As a senior I was once again healthy and earned district champ and placed twelfth in the MHSAA State Cross Country meet. Looking back I do not even recognise the chubby little kid that went to tryouts that first day, this sport has impacted and changed my life in so many ways that it may take years to fully understand the whole impact. Through my years on the team I learned what it was like to have to be accountable, I was expected to be at most, if not all, practices and meets. As I developed as a runner I also developed as a leader as a senior I was named team captain, this was a huge responsibility. I was expected to come to practice every day not ready to run but ready to be positive about whatever workout we were doing and to help my coach in any way I could. We had one coach for about forty-five runners and he was a great coach but he could not be everywhere. So as captain I decided to fill in the gaps I led warm-ups every practice, corrected runners who were not doing workouts properly, helped new runners with stretches, their form, and many other