5 Things That Happened When I Quit The Sport I Loved
For a while there wrestling ran my life.
I went to extra practices, offseason tournaments, and spent four straight years in a singlet during high school. I placed at the state tournament three times, won 128 matches, and earned a collective state championship with my high school team.
I gave countless hours to this sport along with buckets of sweat, blood, and tears.
Then I got to college.
College was a different game because everybody was good. Practices were run with military-like precision, and the training was 10 times harder.
It wasn’t any fun for me anymore for a lot of reasons. This empty feeling followed me all day, and I knew I had to tell my coach I was done with it.
I won’t go into what that was like — to tell my coach I was finished — but I will tell you the interesting things that happened to me afterwards.
I Didn’t Miss It
I got back to my dorm room and realized I had three extra hours to do homework, hang out with my girlfriend, and maybe even catch dinner before 5 PM for once. I was actually loving life. I didn’t miss it, because my sport and I already weren’t on great terms before I decided to stop.
The Apocalypse Didn’t Happen
The earth didn’t open up. Fireballs didn’t rain from the sky. It was almost so uneventful that I was nervously waiting for something to happen around every corner. But it didn’t.
It just goes to show how dramatically we can build something up in our mind only to find out it wasn’t nearly that big of a deal in the first place.
I Felt Shame
I did. It would be a lie to say I didn’t, but one thing I didn’t feel was regret. I didn’t regret quitting my sport, because I didn’t want to go back to it, but I did feel like something got the better of me, which is a tough pill to swallow.
I Realized The Over-Inflated Role Sports Can Take In Our Lives
Don’t get me wrong! Sports can teach us valuable life lessons — I’ll never dispute that — but we can learn these same life lessons elsewhere as well.
Sometimes we build up sports as a life-and-death thing. If we don’t win, we become pretty devastated. Then we get extra nervous before matches because we want to avoid this devastation should we lose.
I mean, my coach was really nasty to me when I told him I was quitting the team, and in that moment I kind of woke up to the whole thing.
A sport is a game in the end.
I Was No Longer Defined By A Game
I used to get meaning from playing a game. How sad is that? Why couldn’t I get meaning from talking to my parents, or helping my younger brother, or volunteering in my community?
Playing a game to get meaning is a little selfish if you ask me. Yes, you are encouraging and helping others achieve their goals, but unless you’re coaching you’re not in it for solely benevolent reasons. You’re mostly in it for yourself and your own accomplishments.
Now I try to define myself by how much I can help other people by connecting with them, spending time with them, and encouraging them.
I define myself by writing. I feel no greater purpose than when someone tells me they felt better after reading something I wrote.
And while it seems like I’m bashing sports a lot in this article, I want you all to realize that I do love sports dearly. I have sports to thank for how far I’ve gotten and the constant ambition in my gut.
Wrestling was my life for a while, but it’s not the end-all. You can learn lessons — but leave it at that. Don’t over-inflate it any more.
I’m telling you, man, don’t ever — don’t ever — drop your head when it comes to a loss, dog, because there’s too much pain outside of this that people are really going through. This right here makes us stronger. Let’s understand who we are as a team, let’s understand who we are as men, and let’s make somebody smile when we walk out of here.
-Ray Lewis
Read more of my writing at my blog, findingtom.com
