Personal Statement
My entire life I always have loved playing sports, being active, running, anything that I could, if I had a ball and some open space I was happy. I have played a lot of sports, sometimes multiple at once, but the one sport that I have never stopped playing has been soccer. It has been one of the most important parts of my life and my favorite thing to do for as long as I can remember. Not only do I love soccer, but it has shaped me into the person I am today.
When I first started playing it was in a recreational league while I was in elementary school, it didn't matter to anyone but the people involved but it taught me a lot. Playing soccer, a team sport when I was younger taught me how to work as a part of a group instead of an individual. Now this is something that can be said about a lot of things, people learn to work with others in all sorts of things, but what I think was an even more important take away was seeing people who didn’t learn the value of group work. I had a teammate who was very talented and likely the best on the team. While it was great for him the team got very frustrated with him and the way he played. As the season went on we played various teams and eventually we played better teams, and per usual my teammate would try and dribble everyone, but it didn’t seem to work. No one on the other team was better than him necessarily, but the team was better than him. They could work together, win the ball, and then beat our team, but unlike other teams we had played we could not pick out their “best player” because it was the team as a whole that was beating us. This ended up being one of the first times I realized that while it is great to be a talented individual, a group of people that works together is almost always better.
I still play soccer, now although at a much more competitive level. I play for a very competitive club team as well as for the varsity team at my highschool. As I have continued to play at higher and higher levels, I credit it with giving me a bit of a competitive edge in all aspects in my life. That doesn’t necessarily mean I want to be better than someone else, but instead is what pushes me to improve myself for my own benefit and to push those close to me to want to improve. In school it means pushing myself to get grades I’m happy with that accurately represent what I have learned and understand. In my social life it means pushing myself to be the best possible friend I can be to those I care about, while also being respectful to people I don’t know as well and caring about people as a whole. It also has caused me to try and be as mature as I can be, especially in situations that it may be difficult to keep a level head and be reasonable. As a whole it pushes me to try and be the best version of myself that I can be.
Soccer may be viewed as just an extracurricular, or activity to pass time for some people, for me it has been more than that. It has taught me life skills of all kinds. It pushes me to be better in all aspects of my life, and it has been the source of many of my closest relationships. Soccer has been and will continue to be one of the most important learning, and character building experiences in my life, and has also impacted my relationship with others.
