For most athletes in their senior year of high school, the big question has already been answered.
“Should I go to college, or should I find a job right after graduation and begin life in the working world?”
Some of you have already filled out lengthy applications and sent them in to colleges across America. Some of you took a brief glance at them and threw them in the trash.
Either way, choices being made. And, in most cases, writers like me are supposed inform our young athletes that the latter choice is the wrong one.
But I am not going to. It isn’t my place to tell teens that the choices they are making are wrong or right. It’s my business to let you know, from the experience of someone who made this same decision only six years ago, where either choice may lead you.
This is my story. Maybe it may help some of you who are still torn about what decision to make come the end of your high school career:
I love water polo. It has been my life. But when I played my last water polo game senior year of high school, I became depressed. I didn’t want to leave the sport, but I didn’t think any college would want a 5’10 hole-set (that’s like a center in basketball) to play at a level dominated by 6’4 guys with extreme talent. And they surely wouldn’t want a student athlete with sub-par grades.
College seemed a bit out of my reach.
But than I met Trevor, a kid I played high school with and was a grade above me. He was one of those guys you never thought would make it as a college boy. First, he was only a decent water polo player, and so I doubted he could ever play with the big boys. And second, he was far from an “A” student.
But when I saw him during Christmas vacation, I quickly learned you can’t judge until you see the final result.
Trevor had just completed a stellar semester at Fordham University in New York City (we both grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area), and he had earned a starting spot on Fordham’s roster.
“How the heck did you do it,” I asked him. I was baffled that a kid with so little potential was well on his way to attaining a finance major at a school located in the business capital of the world.
“I shot low, but aimed high,” he said. And somewhere along the way, I hit my target.”
It took me a little while to understand what Trevor was trying to say. Shoot low, but aim high? Sounds like something a college boy would say.
But I turned in a few applications, regardless, just to see what would happen-one to UC Berkeley, and another to Stanford. Both had water polo powerhouses, and they weren’t far from home. They were great schools academically, and I figured if I was going to go to college, I better go to a respectable one.
When the letters starting coming in, reality hit me over the head with an anvil. I didn’t get accepted to either school, and the water polo coaches never even recognized my name as a possible asset to their programs.
I felt worthless and incapable. All that college fun, all that education-it was swiftly passing me by.
But then the first part of what Trevor had told me began to make some sense: “Shoot low.”
I didn’t have to play water polo for Stanford or Berkeley. If I did have the grades to make it to either of the schools, I would ride the bench all the way through my college career, anyways. Us athletes don’t have to be an Inoku Funaki type to play at the college level. The problem with college sports nowadays is that too many kids give up if they can’t play for a college powerhouse programs like Nebraska football, Duke basketball or USC baseball. There are thousands of other colleges who would benefit from your athletic ability, and you don’t have to be some high school superstar.
So I shot low. Fordham’s water polo team is never in the Top 20 in NCAA play. They don’t play the UCLA; they don’t play Stanford. But they do play water polo, and I ended up getting four incredible years playing teams all over the the east coast. Best of all, I met twelve wonderful people (my teammates) and shared with them unforgettable moments all throughout those four years. There are colleges like this all over the nation. Do you play volleyball? Do you play football? What about bowling? There are thousands of universities that harbor these programs, and you would be amazed at how much time they put into getting you to attend their school if you pick a program that may need your athletic ability (that means scholarships, parents).
Remember, you don’t have to be the best in the KIF, or the best on your team. And you don’t have to play for a school that gets air time on ESPN. You just have to pick one of the thousands of college teams that has a need for you. And trust me, there is always one.
When I got to Fordham, I was in love. It wasn’t necessarily the school that made me so happy more than the environment. Thousands of kids my age, no parents in site. Seems like the best way to get into trouble.
But it’s not.
What do I do if I want to make sure I don’t get expelled from this fun college environment? I study. And that was the motivation that brought me through four years of higher education. I didn’t want to leave all the fun I was having and return to a mother that would nag me to get a job. I wanted to have fun, and the only way to maintain that was to go to class, read the assigned material and make the grade.
So, I did what Trevor said I should do. I “aimed high.” And with that, I stayed in New York, hung out with my friends, and learned that education, especially at the college level, can be extremely fun and interesting.
Now, I have graduated and my water polo career is officially over.
For most of you athletes, this is an inevitable truth: your career does, in a sense, end. Maybe you will still play your sport in senior leagues or with your friends for recreation, but you will never feel as official as you did when you played in college.
But I promise you one thing, the choice you make to play your sport at a certain college will open you up to a new vision of what you could do with your life. That is what college does: It gives you choices.
Mine was journalism. I loved sports so much, that if I wasn’t going to play them, I was going to write about them.
So during those four years of playing college water polo, I became a journalist.
What Trevor said never made more sense to me until the moment I was handed that college diploma.
I might have shot low, but I aimed high. And somewhere along the way, I hit my target.
Now I am doing what I love-writing about something I love-and I have memories that will last me a lifetime.
To all you senior high school athletes out there, think about it.
Do you really think your not good enough? Do you think there is no college that would accept you as an athlete?
Think again. There is a world of opportunity out there for you, you just have to find the right place to tap it.
