One sentence. The agony has fully grown. Spreading throughout my body like a fungus. Reaching across every isolated part of my trembling frame. One sentence. I can feel my pounding heartbeat clawing its way out of my chest. The cold air grazed across my arms. I should have worn a sweatshirt. One sentence. The group of petrified girls surrounded me; I’ve never heard such a deafening silence. The door opens. “Madison,” the coach called my name. All the girls looked at me knowing what was coming. One sentence. I don’t remember this part well. I must have walked down the hall, following my coach into a conference room. He started talking, but all I could think about was that single sickening sentence. The single sentence that has been repeating through my head all day. One sentence. One sentence that could change my life. One sentence that could absolutely destroy me. One sentence that I committed my life to hear. One sentence that could tell me if all of my time and effort was wasted. My coach takes a breath before speaking, “Unfortunately you didn’t make the team”. One sentence.
This failure was devastating for me. I’ve been playing softball since I was six. Aside from the love I hold for computers and programming, my life revolves around a yellow ball made of polyurethane. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t practice. This may seem unnecessary to some people, but softball is my life, the field is my home, the team is my family, and the ball encases my hopes and dreams. To hear I wasn’t good enough for what I dedicated my life to felt like a never-ending chain of torture.
To understand what happened next, one needs to understand my family and how they’ve raised me. My younger sisters and I have been raised to be polite – direct eye contact while speaking, strong handshakes – any small gestures that show we respect someone. We’re part of the small group of teenagers who still say, “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir”. As inconsequential as these small responses may seem, they encase a quantity of respect. For this reason, I respected my coaches like they were my parents. I always replied, “yes, sir” or “yes, coach.” After every day of tryouts, I walked up to the coaches and thanked them while giving them a strong handshake. Little did I know these small gestures would change my life.
My coach continued, “Unfortunately, you didn’t make the team, but would you be interested in being our team manager?” My respect and attitude earned me a position as team manager for my varsity team. I was trained to run practices and support the team as a coach instead of a player. I learned how to create plays, look at statistics, and use players’ abilities to help the team. In addition, softball was no longer my only interest; I gained more time to learn how to code and work with computers. Thus, making me a more well-rounded athlete. Having more free time, I was able to teach myself how to use Autocad and write in C++ code. The new position helped fuel my growing interest in computer engineering.