It means pain. It’s what gives us the aches in our bones and bruises on our skin. It’s what makes us look up at the ceiling at five in the morning and think: is all this worth it?
It means failure. For every big play we make, every record we break, there’s a mountain of mistakes and missteps that we had to climb to get there.
It means sacrifice. It means saying “no” to that dinner or that party, even if all of our friends are going. And it means calling our families during holidays instead of seeing them.
But being a student-athlete also means passion. It means pride. And it means pursuit. The pursuit of success, on and off the field, in and out of the jersey. It means believing in ourselves and those around us in order to build a foundation or build onto one.
Most of all, it means love. It means loving who we are. It means loving what we do. It means that despite all that pain, all that failure, all that sacrifice, we persevere. we pursue. Because we love it. And because we can’t live without it.
- Jake Lawler