WOODBURY — You miss the game-winning shot. You don’t make the team. Do you quit? Or do you come back stronger?
Every athlete deals with adversity during their careers. Whether it’s something small like falling behind in a game or it’s something larger like training the whole summer to make a team but then you don’t.
According to USA Today, “About 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by age 13.”
A significant percentage of that is due to adversity and the anxiety that comes along with it. Some handle it better than others, but how do they get through it?
Last year, eighth-grader Parker Chmielewski went on trial with New York City Football Club (NYCFC) but didn’t end up getting signed.
“I was obviously a little bit sad that I didn’t get signed but it helped motivate me to train harder to prove them wrong,” Chmielewski said.
While adversity is typically viewed negatively, it can actually be beneficial to your game. When things are easy for us, we tend to not try as hard to improve. However, when we are faced with obstacles, we’re pushed to work harder and find ways to get past them. This is how we grow and become stronger individuals.
Chmielewski isn’t the only one who turned a setback into motivation. Lucas Forcucci, an eighth-grade basketball player at Woodbury Middle School, was faced with the challenge of not making a team he really wanted to play for. In his case, it was not making the school basketball team as a seventh-grader.
“I love basketball and I really wanted to make the team,” Forcucci said. “I was hurt at first that I had not made it but I kind of understood why. I just had not played my best at tryouts. This helped me to stay consistent over the summer because I knew the harder I worked the better I would get.”
Forcucci went on to make the team as an eighth-grader, and WMS had an undefeated season. Similarly, in Chance Salisbury’s case, his form of adversity came during one of the basketball games.
“In one of the games this season, I was having an off day with my shots,” Salisbury said. “It made me very frustrated because that’s not like me. I remembered something my dad told me about how you always have to think that you’re the best. After that, my shots started to fall again and I had a good rest of the game.”
When you hit a small roadblock in a game, it can be useful to use positive self-talk to remind yourself of who you are.
Even some of the top athletes in the world suggest that adversity was beneficial to them. Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
The problem that some of us have is when we are in the face of challenges, we let them break us. Instead, we should use them as a stepping stone to learn and grow.
Studies show that athletes develop more resilience when they are faced with adversity and get past it. Tough experiences can really help kids grow and succeed later on. Even though people often see struggles in sports as a bad thing, they can actually be really important for improvement.
So the next time you miss that shot or don’t make that team, just remember that it’s not the end of your story, it’s the start of your comeback.
