Fun for the Young

From the perspective of a child who grew up with sports all around me; practice, competition, and winning have been apart of my vocabulary at a very young age. Even at a young age I knew the difference between winning and losing and the feelings that come along with each. The one thing that I remember more than anything at a young age was the concept of fun. As a child starting sports around the age of five my father always pushed me to have fun. You see at age five, fun is the only thing that mattered because if you weren't having fun you wouldn't play the sport long enough to realize that you might actually have an act for it. My father never pushed me into any sport that I didn't want to do, instead he would suggest things that I might be good at and as it turned out he was right.

I started off being a cheerleader, that's right a cheerleader. At age five I was introduced into the sporting world with a pair of pom poms in hand. You see my dad coached, my brother played football, so it only made sense that I was the cheerleader. Cheerleading I found fun and it was a way to make friends and meet new people and I did it for five years until I was about ten years old. After I reached the age where cheerleading became not so fun I moved on to my next sport, soccer. Soccer was more of a transition sport, one that got me out of the girl cheerleading phase and into the true mentality of an athlete. I played soccer for three years with a little basketball thrown in there, but soon enough with the coaching changes it also became not fun. Lastly I moved on to basketball where I have been since. I remember playing one season of basketball in elementary school and hating it! I played that one season and quit, so it surprised me when my dad tried to get me to play again in middle school. He told me to just try it again so I did; I played my next season at the local community center and fell in love with the sport. Not only was I good at it, but it was fun and it was competitive which I loved. Basketball was fun which is why I have stuck with the sport for so long and am now playing it in college. There were times in basketball that I just wanted to quit, and if it had been any other sport I probably would have, but basketball it just drew me in and captured my competitive side. I'm not saying that everything was easy, there were times when I would come out of games crying because I was so frustrated, but it meant that I cared. It meant that I wanted to work harder and do better so that I wouldn't have to feel the pain of frustration. It meant that I truly enjoyed the sport and had fun playing even during tough times.