Gratitude Series 2018, Day Twenty Five: A Silver Lining

I am grateful for the silver lining of the life lessons I learned from being cut from two sports teams.  In high school, sports was a huge part of my identity.  My best friends were my teammates, my hours after school were usually spent at some kind of practice, and my goals mostly revolved around athletic success.  I attended the biggest high school in the state of Nebraska, where we had about 700 people in each class, so each and every sports team was competitive to get a spot on.  Although I was lucky to get a spot on some of the teams, there were two try-outs where I got cut:  freshman basketball and varsity volleyball.  Making it on these teams meant a lot to me, and both times it felt devastating to get cut.  However, the experience taught me some important things:

First, in the case of freshman basketball, it taught me to take that adversity, work hard, and try again.  I played on a YMCA team that winter, did some weightlifting, and came back and made the reserve basketball team the next year.  (This is not a Michael Jordan story - i was a bench warmer and that was my one and only season of high school basketball - but it still felt great to bounce back after that first year of getting cut.)

Second, in the case of varsity volleyball, it taught me that sometimes disappointing things happen, but life goes on.  I would have loved to be on that volleyball team, but my life did not cease to exist, or even cease to be good, when I lost the spot as a team member.  I still had my friendships, I still had a great athletic outlet with track, and I had college to look forward to.  I got to experience losing something that meant a lot to me while I was still in a very protected and supportive environment, so that when I experienced hardships as an adult, I had some practice coping with difficulty.

So while it was hard to get cut from those sports teams, I'm grateful for the silver lining of lessons learned.