Kaylee Smith '21 Recruiting Profile

Making and playing with the prestigious Mansfield varsity high school soccer team as a sophomore taught me a lot about myself that I hadn't been aware of before. Although I moved to Mansfield in 2017, I was keenly aware of the competition that was ahead of me to secure a spot on the team. I was determined to make the 2 time Hockomock champion team (3 time champions post the spring season) and spent the summer of 2018 intensely training, running daily in order to beat the 6.45 minute mile requirement and practicing drills and ball skills each day. Hard work paid off! I was the one of the two underclassman forwards that made the varsity team. Now it was time for me to perform.

I put an immense amount of pressure on myself from the start, I didn't want to let my coach or team down, nor my parents who were always my cheerleaders. One day my coach commented to me that it looked like I wasn't having fun, wasn't smiling. I thought to myself, what is he talking about? But then, over the next several days I reflected on his words and my feelings and discovered that the self imposed requirement of being the 'perfect soccer player' was actually negatively impacting my performance on the field. It was going against the very reason that I had been given the opportunity to play on the team. Through this discovery, I talked with team mates and read articles on mental toughness. I developed a pre-game mental routine to allow me to positively focus my energy on my performance, such as running through plays, seeing the field, and remembering I had a great team that I was a member of.

 Using my new strategies, I was able to balance my seriousness and fun on the field as well as apply those strategies in different ways to school and conflict with friends. I learned that I have a broader love for the sport and that what we do and learn on the field are widely transferrable to other areas in my life.