Sports are not my priority anymore

Sololiya Ebba | The Chronicle

For as long as I can remember, I have been an athlete. 

16 years of my life have been filled with the chaos of games, practices, lessons, meets and tournaments. I was the kid whose parents put them in every sport imaginable ‒ tennis, soccer, dance, gymnastics and swimming ‒ in hopes that one would stick. I even became an orange belt in karate at the age of seven.

Luckily, one sport did stick. Since we lived in Florida and were always around water, my parents put me in swimming classes early, and because I liked it so much, I started competitive swimming at six years old. As time went on, I got better, and two-and-a-half-hour practices for six days a week seemed like nothing when I was doing what I absolutely loved. I got older, practices got harder, and I started going to more meets. It consumed more of my time, but I still loved the chaos.

Love fades. 

Six years after I started, I was still swimming, but the chaos was not loveable anymore. I associated the sport with the voice in my head that told me I was behind or questioned why I was not getting faster every time I raced. That “voice” was the epitome of my true desire to be perfect. Because, at my core, I am a raging perfectionist. Swimming brought out the worst of that. Towards the end, the desire to be “perfect” turned into constant anxiety and negative self-thought.

During the last year that I swam, I started playing volleyball and I discovered that I liked it. When my family and I moved to Ohio, I decided I was done swimming. So, my volleyball career began. I played three years of club volleyball and two seasons of school volleyball. In those years, I traveled around the Midwest to tournaments, made lifelong friends and won gold at Nationals in Florida. It was chaos again, and I loved it.

Throughout my sophomore school season, volleyball became another outlet for the voice in my head that would tell me I was not good enough. At the same time that I wanted to be my best self while playing, I had to be my best in school. Over time, one outweighed the other. I could not keep up the lifestyle of going to school on five hours of sleep, juggling homework from Advanced Placement and honors classes, and attending team dinners, practices and games. 

So, I played my last volleyball game. The chaos stopped, and I have not been an athlete since October 14, 2023. When you spend your whole life playing a sport, its absence is unsettling. Saying “no” when people would ask me if I played a sport suddenly became the most difficult task in my life. My club jerseys began to collect dust in the back of my closet as what was once reality became a distant memory. While a part of me was relieved I did not have to partake in something I did not love anymore, I did not know how to cope after losing a part of my personality. 

Now, it has been over a year without practices, games or tournaments. Seeing my teammates have new teammates and continue to play the sport that a small part of me still loved was hard, but it taught me a lot about myself. I have a lot more time on my hands, and even though that usually gets taken up by the rigorous course load that is junior year, I am able to use it wisely to still have some time to enjoy myself. The stigma that surrounds non-athletes is boundless. People think they hate sports, spend too much time indoors and have half the social life of an athlete. I am living proof that this is nothing more than just a stereotype. Overall, I am much happier knowing that I made the right decision. I knew that I never aspired to play past high school, and quitting when I did confirmed the inevitable. I chose my academic performance and my mental health over the thrill of sports. And while I miss it, I do not regret it. 

I still love sports. I always will. One of the ways I have filled the time left vacant by my non-athletic lifestyle is by becoming a sports writer for The Chronicle. This way, I can stay immersed in the world of sports without actually being a physical factor in it. It has allowed me to take a look into multiple realms of the athletic world, some of which I had never really paid attention to prior. It has also allowed me to bring in my background knowledge and perspective and apply it in a place where I know it is useful. Also, I still love to watch volleyball and swimming on TV with my family, as well as football, basketball and tennis.

 I live outside the chaos, and I love it here.