2:45 PM – Leave school

4:30 PM – Soccer practice

6:30 PM – Basketball practice

9:00 PM – Dinner

9:00 PM-12:00 AM – Homework

12:00 AM – Go to bed

And then I wake up and do the same thing over again the next day.

This is my everyday life throughout the months of October-July. Do I get overwhelmed? Of course, and honestly, overwhelmed is an understatement. However, this is what I choose to do as a dual-sport athlete, and my passion for each of these sports is what helps me to persevere. 

Going to practice or playing in a game are the only times where I allow myself to escape the chaos of my everyday life. Having four hours of training a night may seem too like too much but, to be honest, it is a perfect break for me. However, ever since I started high school, I have begun to notice a few downfalls to a life like this, and sometimes I have to really consider if the pros outway the cons.  

For example, some nights I get less than five hours of sleep. I never really realized how big of an issue this was until freshman year when I could hardly drag myself out of bed and get ready for school. This began to happen more often than not, and I started to reconsider if I should possibly cut back, but I didn’t, and I have grown immune to exhaustion and counter it with an insane amount of caffeine. 

Another con is that athletes who are involved in that many hours of arduous activity are more prone to injuries than those who are not. This became a factor at the end of freshman year when I had to undergo knee surgery because of an overuse injury. For seven months, I was almost entirely out of commission from everything I loved most. You would think that I took this injury as a sign that I should dial it back a notch, but I went right back to it all, and here I am back in the same cycle. 

However, playing different sports has put me ahead in several aspects of my life. From a leadership perspective, I have grown so much over the years, and playing multiple sports that are so different from each other allows me to express leadership in more ways that one. Not to mention, I have learned how to manage a busy schedule, and this has allowed me to take on other tasks outside of sports and school: tutoring, student council, the Sports Report, and mentoring. 

Despite a few sore muscles, late nights, and busy days, I have come to the conclusion that the pros exceed the cons by a long-shot. No matter the amount of mental breakdowns I put myself through, I still find myself waking up every day with the same schedule as the previous day and loving every second of it.