The Path

It started when I was four. My dad and I used to always watch sports matches together. He would let me stay up (against my moms will) and watch the highly anticipated NCAA basketball late-night games, sitting right next to me on the creased black recliner chair that we had since I was born. Every 10 minutes, he would ask, “can you tell me what just happened?” after the star player was thrown out of the game because he lost his temper, or after the ref called a charge, even though he should have called a block.

It wasn’t basketball for me, though. I was interested in football. I liked the mental toughness of the game; the ability of players like Tom Brady or Randy Moss to give their souls to the game is something I had never seen before. But, I also liked the physical battle. I loved watching players tumble on the ground after running through a mosh pit of 300-pound lineman. Weird enough to say, but I wanted that. I envied their strength, their resilience, but above all, their bravery.

Link to photo: https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/11/penalty-for-london-fletcher-hit-leaves-redskins-de/

15 years later, after deciding tennis didn’t provide me with enough of a physical challenge, I decided to try out for lacrosse. It wasn’t because I was bored of tennis and wanted to find a new hobby; It was because I wanted to be brave, like Randy Moss, running through men that looked as giant as the field did to me. I wanted to try something that I knew wasn’t going to come as easily as tennis did; I wanted that challenge.

After my first practice, you could not see the color of my skin on my arms. I was bruised from my wrist to my bicep, my legs were covered in dirt and my head hurt because I took a stick to the head.

However, I didn’t come home crying like I did after tennis practice; I was ecstatic because it was exactly what I wanted. I was on the first page of a chapter on resilience in the book that would take me almost 15 years to complete.

Following my junior season on the varsity high school lacrosse team, I had been the captain and knew I was going to be a captain the following year. At that point, I was a three-time Offensive Player of The Year, a three-time team MVP and a two-time All-American Nominee. I was being recruited by Division-1 colleges. I achieved what I wanted.

I decided to not play sports in college that year. My brain was wired towards winning; winning the game, winning the MVP, winning every pacer-test even if it meant I was hurling after it was over. It started to take over my life. When I was able to sit down with my parents to discuss my future in lacrosse, I remember thinking to myself that winning might feel like everything but it's the path to winning that is everything. It's the tumbles you take, it’s the wrist you break after scoring a goal, the losing in the state-championship, learning from it, and making sure you’re better next time that makes you a winner.

Isn’t that what makes Tom Brady the winningest quarterback to ever play the game? He’s lost, he’s been called out for cheating, he’s ripped open his seemingly golden-hand, but he was brave. He didn’t let the bad supersede his journey to success, and he has seven Super Bowls to prove that.

Link to photo: https://people.com/sports/tom-brady-shows-off-7-super-bowl-rings/

So, if you take anything from this, it’s the bravery to get through the bad and learn from it that makes you a winner.