Be a Team Member of Your Community by Melinda

Be a Team Member of Your Community by Melinda - January 2017 Scholarship Essay

Throughout my high school career, I have participated in extracurricular, athletic sports every single year. In seventh grade, I started out playing tennis in the fall and running track in the spring. I continued with these two sports throughout the years, until Junior year when I had to drop track to focus on homework. Nonetheless, as Senior year came around, I once again played tennis and made it to sections individually and as a team. I cannot describe how proud I am of my team this year and all my teams in the past. I truly believe that sports has kept me sane all these years of school and endless homework. Being in sports has shown me how to push myself to the limit and get things done. For example, when playing a tennis match, I need to push myself to reach for every ball and to finish points when I can up at the net. For me, I can see a similar situation to this within school. I need to push myself to study extra hard and strive for that perfect GPA, and I need to “finish points” by being a good student and a role model for others in my class. Sports have shaped me into who I am more than what I probably think, and they have helped me see the importance of being a team player in my own community.

Besides showing me how to work extra hard, sports has helped show me a couple things about what I would like to do when I grow up. First, my career goals have very little to do with sports, and I believe that being in sports in high school has helped me make that decision. I do not entirely like physical exercise; I would much rather being reading books and doing homework. This has helped me choose a much better career for myself; one that I will truly enjoy. Second, besides my career plan, being in high school sports has helped me find hobbies that I will most likely continue throughout my life. For example, I hope to continue playing tennis even as I grow old. Even though sports will not play a huge role in my future career, I believe they will still be a big part of my life as an adult.

In my family, we enjoy a wide variety of activities from watching movies, to camping, to playing sports together. Even though playing sports is not the biggest part of our lives, it has definitely helped with our relationships as a family. First, as my mom and dad would come to my tennis matches and track meets, I feel that our relationships became stronger. I always hoped that they would come to watch and afterward we would go out to eat. In addition, I feel that my involvement in high school sports has not only helped my relationships with family members but also has given us more options when we want to go play sports. For example, my family never went to go play tennis for fun, but now that I was in tennis, we will often go to the courts for an hour to hit. Also, because I played tennis, my younger sister also started tennis in Seventh grade. This helped the two of us become closer because we spent so much time together.

High school sports has helped me in so many ways, it is probably impossible to think of each and every thing that sports has helped me with. But when looking at a much larger picture, high school sports helped shape me into who I am, helped me create my future plans, and helped me build my relationships with friends and family. I am truly grateful that I was involved in sports throughout high school. However, one big reason I enjoyed participating in sports is not only because of the reasons listed already. I found that through sports, I was able to connect with my community and become part of my community by helping and doing service work. I realized that being a team player for sports is really similar to being a team player in your community: you have to help out in any way you can in order to accomplish something great. I started doing volunteer work in my community because I figured that that is my job as a team member of my community.