SpORTS

18 | SPORTS

I’M A TRY-ATHLETE& proud

Confession: I’m a serial quitter. By the age of 14, I had tried and quit a total of six sports. I started ballet at age three and quit by five. I started jazz at age five and quit in a week. I started soccer at age five and also quit in a week. I started hip-hop at age six and quit by seven. I started tennis at age eight and quit by nine. I started swimming at age 10 and quit by 13. I started badminton at age 14 and quit after a month. I became addicted to the action of giving up. Being a newbie in the latest sport I had picked up regularly gave me both the validation and excuse to suck; however, that excuse faded as weeks and months passed, leaving me to feel insecure and frustrated — a condition further conducive to my serial quitting. Hours of practice turned into hours of bruising, footwork to falling, and despite all my efforts, I still would not improve. I ached to succeed, spending hours dwelling on every misplaced movement and moments of rest. I felt guilty for trying and felt guilty for resting. Perfectionism grew within me like a parasite, always in the back of my head, feeding me words of doubt and self-hatred. Every missed shot in tennis became self-criticism. Every added second in track became an insult. As the insults stacked up in my mind, fitness became frustration and falling out of love with a sport became easy. This cycle trapped me: I start, eager to improve, try, fail and consequently quit. My stomach dropped everytime I made a mistake — which was plenty — and negative self-talk trailed along, leading me to drop every sport I tried. I could not find a sport I felt that I could naturally achieve in. Until I found swimming. Within a year, I moved up three competitive groups; I felt stronger and faster, and swim class became routine. Just when I thought I had found “the sport for me,” swimming made me want to crawl out of my skin. In the seventh grade, comments about my weight stifled my already weak body image. Suddenly, fitting into a tight swimsuit surrounded by judgemental eyes seemed more stressful than empowering. I quit a year later. In my ninth-grade Geometry Honors class, I sat listening to the conversation between two seniors behind me in envy: “I’m just trying out for the swim team for fun; I’m pretty sure I will suck.” Sports in my household were always associated with one goal: losing weight. The idea of lightheartedly trying a new sport went so against the fitness culture I had grown used to. I missed swimming. I missed the post-practice feeling of being tired, yet proud and the crisp taste of fresh water after an hour of being immersed in chlorinated water. Still, I could not bring myself to try out for the school team. My body insecurity withheld me from the only sport I had felt truly proud of my participation in. Sports, I concluded, just were not for me, and I told myself “I am just not a working-out person.” Three years later, I would turn out to have more in common with the senior from my Geometry class than I would have thought. Last October, I wrote an article about the Miami Palmetto Senior High School Diving team — “Making a Splash: A Look Into Palmetto’s One Woman Dive Team.” Watching our school’s one diving athlete fly in the air through my camera lens, I found myself wanting to learn more about the sport, beyond the confines of my computer keyboard.

I became the second member of the diving team, with no background or experience, alongside our Olympic Team coach. I had never done anything like it; I decided to dive only because I had been curious. I did not care that I had no natural ability in diving, or that most of my attempts were failures. Embracing this discomfort and anxiety that had trapped me for years gave me the opportunity to find an extremely supportive community at Palmetto that I had previously withheld myself from.

When the diving season ended, I decided to join the Badminton team again, and I promised myself that I would not quit. While bruises now trademark my legs, I love hitting the shuttle with all my might and stumbling through footwork routines.

If you take any lesson from my extensive “try athlete” career, let it be this: fall in love with failing. Sports do not need to be about meeting the perfect goal, or dropping a few pounds; they can simply be about trying and learning. Gianna Hutton Senior Media Editor g.hutton.thepanther@gmail.com PHOTO COURTESY OF GIANNA HUTTON

DESIGN BY GIANNA HUTTON PHOTO BY ISABELLA HEWITT