@LWS95 I have a plebe sort-of-friend who walked onto the track team. You probably know her at least a little.
My question for you is do you know of anyone who has walked onto a team/sport that he/she did not play in high school?
It is something I truly want to do, but I'm at a slight disadvantage. How can I work and train myself to try out for a team sport that I haven't played since junior high (my school doesn't have team sports, too small)? I already have some skill, but it's difficult to get better at a team sport without being able to play it (funny, I've always said that about tryouts for sports; you can't play until you go get better at playing). I know and well understand that the flagship sports like football are heavily recruited for and could do just fine without ever looking at me. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to try.
Ever since elementary school and junior high (when I went to large 5A schools), I've always been that lanky kid who couldn't pass tryouts and ended up with piles of participation medals/trophies/ribbons from the B teams (good try *clap clap* good effort, anyone ever been bad at Little League baseball? You know where that comes from, then
). Now, even though I don't have to deal with tryouts (there are only three sports here, XC, golf, T&F), I'm still not what I'd call a great athlete. Even in the 1A Conference (UIL conference for schools under 200 students or so), I never place in anything athletic. I've never been a team captain, and I always get shown up at track meets and golf tournaments. Even in practice and outside of it, it seems like I have to work three times as hard as everyone else just to be average or mediocre. I'm the only one of the sprinters and jumpers who works on it outside of practice (the others choose to party on weekends), and all they do during practice is complain, whine, and half-a** everything because they're "bored". Then we go to a meet and they get first in everything they do while making it look so easy. I never have anything to show for all of the hard hours of work I put in. My grouchy Vietnam vet grandpa always tells me not to worry about it, that I smoke them all in the classroom, anways (his words), but I do worry. Is there a place in varsity sports for people who weren't born with God-given athletic talent?
I could always take the "face it, kid, you're not good enough" side and just cheer from the stands (nothing wrong with cheering; fans are what make the games go 'round), but I'm too stubborn for that. I'm willing to put in whatever work it takes, my question is whether or not I would even have a chance without the playing experience. Don't SAs want resilient people, anyways?
tl;dr I work harder and I'm still not good enough. I can't get experience playing with a team because I can't make a team to begin with. I feel like I missed my chance to be good by not playing for years and years like many others (I realize there are special cases, I'm just wondering if I can become one of those special cases). College sports are well past the developmental phase for an athlete, which is why this kind of embarrasses me to post, but it needs to be done because I need guidance. Thus, voila!