The time is finally here! In about a week, many of you will start school again. Excited? I’m sure for a lot of you, school has been your worst nightmare since Pre-K. All the assignments, tests, quizzes, clubs, and sport tryouts have boosted up your stress level to the extreme. I have to admit that school is very stressful, especially if you are going into high school where the GPA factor comes into play. In this blog, I would like to help many of you who are experiencing those levels of excessive stress to overcome them. I am going to HELP you deal with sport teams. Joining sport teams seem to be very fun and entertaining, but in reality, it reduces the amount of time for homework and other extracurricular activities. THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY. I am going to give you some advice for joining sport teams.
1. Before even thinking about joining a sport team, ask yourself, “Will I be able to manage the time and effort towards a sport?” If you can’t even answer, “yes” to this question, then you should think over it.
2. Make sure you have a passion for the sport you want to play. If you don’t have passion for the sport, you will want to quit after short period of time.
3. For those people who enjoy playing more than one sport and have a hard time choosing which sport they should pursue throughout their high school years, they need to ask themselves, “Which ones of these sports will I be most capable of playing for all four years in high school?” You might also want to consider other factors like the amount of practice time needed for each sport, how easy it is to get injured in each sport, and how competitive that sport is at your school. All these factors should help you narrow down your choices more.
4. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have good sportsmanship. This characteristic is the most important when it comes to sports. Professional athletes don’t give up after they lose one game but they keep their heads held up high. Failure will occur more than once in your life, but you take that failure and LEARN from it.
5. One of the main problems I find in sport teams is the TEAMWORK. A basketball team may have ten of the most skilled players, but they end up losing to an average team. It might seem like a shocker to you, but the answer to this situation is TEAMWORK. The skilled basketball team couldn’t work together as team because they thought they could handle it with their individual skills. On the other hand, the average team worked hard as a team because they knew that it takes more than ONE person to win a game. This situation applies to every team sport out there. So my advice to you when you join a sport team is to take the effort to get to know your teammates. Be friendly and social towards everyone on the team and create connections. This not only creates better teamwork, but people will have a good impression towards you. I have seen people quitting a team because they feel uncomfortable with their teammates.
6. Another helpful advice I want to point out is time management. Do not randomly join a sport team without knowing what you are getting yourself into. Take some time to sit down and make a daily schedule of how you are going to manage your homework, tests, club meetings, and sport team practices all in one day. This might seem very time consuming at first, but it will serve you well in the end.
I have come to the conclusion of my advice. Remember when the time comes for you to join a sport team, it is up to YOU to make that decision. Make sure you consider all of the factors mentioned above before taking that next step in making a decision.
