High School Sports Changed My Life

As I have grown into the woman I am today, I have realized that athletics truly saved my life. Therefore, I found a way to turn my one true passion into a career. My name is Meredith Moore, I am 19 years old, a junior at Central Michigan University, only daughter of three, Sport Management Major/Legal Studies Minor with dreams of being an agent in the NBA.

            Athletics has always been the steady stream of consistency in my life. Coming from a background that hasn’t always been the easiest to go through, basketball provided me the outlet that truly saved me. I was five years old when I attended my first basketball camp, few people get the opportunity to find their passion so young, so when I did…I let it take over. By the age of high school, I was playing year-round on 4 different teams.

            It was ten years later, one week before basketball tryouts were set to begin, that my parents broke the news that they were getting divorced and I would be moving two hours away at the end of the school year; without my brothers, friends, pets, or father. Fifteen-year-old Meredith did not know who to turn to, how to cope, or really how to get her anger out, so she learned to leave it on the court.

That year I made the varsity team as a sophomore.

Emily, captain of the team, became my role model. She was a senior, while I was a sophomore. She was the best player on the team and let’s just say I had a lot of work to do. She showed me what it looked like to take your outside aggressions and filter them through the game and she taught me how to let the “zone” mindset take over before game time. Emily showed me that if you put in the time and effort, results will come, and this game will reward you.

            I was a lost teenager, with no one to turn to, and Emily never knew that I saw her as a role model or what her leadership was doing for me. To this day, I have never told her that the night I was writing my suicide note to my family and making plans for how I was going to do it the next day, she texted me saying she was proud of how hard I worked at practice that day and gave me accolades for my improvements. I never finished writing the letter.

            Over the course of a season, a team can grow so close. Spending 15-20 hours a week with the same people, everyone learns A LOT about one another. It’s guaranteed that you’ll find your best friends and even your enemies. Nevertheless, if anything goes down on the court/field/rink, you’ll be there to back up your teammates. High school sports not only teach you a lot about people, but they teach you so much more about yourself.

Basketball became my escape, whenever things were hitting the fan in the house I could go outside and play in the drive-way, or text my teammates to meet me at the gym. If my parents had a court date, you could guarantee I had a basketball tournament I was going to instead. When I felt like I had no one to turn to; I knew I had a ball and a hoop that would make everything okay, or a team full of girls that would be there for me no matter what. High school athletics saved my life and I know I’m not in that alone.