During college, I played baseball at a small college in Pennsylvania. By senior year, I was closing in on the school record for hits. As I got closer to the record, I started to think about how cool it would be to be break it. All the hard work I put in would have finally paid off.
Then during the middle of the season, it happened. I got some high fives and shoutouts on social media. But a few days later, I was forgot about it and so did everyone else. I realized that the last few years I missed the whole reward of the goal I had set. When you focus so much on a goal, you miss all the work that goes into.
The journey for the record started six years before during my junior year of high school. I was playing for the JV baseball team, while all my friends were on varsity. I wasn’t even good enough to sit on the bench for the varsity team. That year changed my life. I started lifting weights and practicing extra whenever I could. The next year, I finally got my chance on varsity and recruited myself to the college I went. No coaches recruited me.
Breaking the school record didn’t mean much to me. What means the most to me is the journey it took me from JV to senior year. I became a much better player than I had any business being. I learned more about myself than I could have imagined. That’s the prize, not the baseball sitting in a case in my living room collecting dust.
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