Greatness

Jacob Tomlin and the path to unparalell

Jacob Tomlin had huge goals bouncing around on the inside of his head when he took the mat for his first season at Colton High School. Tomlin wanted to be a history maker; someone who squeezed his name into the record books with gaudy achievements like an undefeated high school career and becoming a four-time state champion. The young man wanted to be unprecedented and his track record up to that point showed that it was possible.

He had accrued various youth championships, he was the middle school state champion and he won the Oregon Greco title two times. If anyone could do it than it was this kid coming out of Colton.

It was not meant to be.

Tomlin slipped up in the semifinals of the state tournament his freshman year in an overtime match where he was called for an illegal move after he slammed a kid too hard.

“That devastated me,” Tomlin says of the loss. “All of my dreams of high school were pretty much shattered. I wanted to be undefeated through high school and win four state titles.”
Tomlin went to bed the night after the loss dejected.

“It was tough, I had to wrestle the next day too, and I was five or six pounds overweight and I just wanted quit and say ‘I am done, I am not going to wrestle any more,’ but I had to go home and run that weight off and wrestle the next day,” Tomlin recalls. “It was really difficult for me but I just thought, ‘it is not going to do me any good to throw the towel in now so I might as well make the best of it if I can.”

Tomlin certainly did. In the rest of his high school career he racked up three state titles and only was defeated twice more, once when he was sick. However the most telling fact about Tomlin is that the night after he lost and went home feeling crestfallen after his dreams for his high school career were broken, he got on the treadmill, lost the weight he needed to and came back to the meet prepared and he took home third place.

His self motivation, his willingness to roll with the punches, is something that has been with Jacob his whole life and other people have taken notice. This year Tomlin was named the 3A state wrestler of the year, an award voted on by coaches from all classifications in the state, and he was named to the Oregon Wrestling All-Star team. In the next month he will travel down to California to face the state champion there for bragging rights.

All of his accomplishments speak to Tomlin’s inner drive.

“Jacob is a young man that has a very high character and is very self-motivated,” Jacob’s father, Dennis Tomlin says.

When Jacob started wrestling at a young age, he was the one pushing to improve his skills, not his father or a coach. And he worked hard, even when his wrestling career did not start with the same dominance that it ended with.

“He initiated it at first, he said that he wanted to try it and just like most kids just starting off, he went out there and he got thumped on pretty good,” Dennis says. “He had pretty limited success, but then he started learning more and started to really love it and he would start asking me, ‘hey dad, can we go to practice tonight?’ And I would get in the car and drive him over to Canby and sit for three hours and watch him practice.”

And so began Jacob’s love for the sport of wrestling and he quickly knew that he wanted to take it to the next level.

“I think probably around fifth grade was when I started to get really serious about it,” Tomlin said. “I kind of realized that if I wanted to take it to the next level I kind of had to do something more.”

So Jacob started pouring in his time and effort to the pursuit of wrestling. He and his dad drove all over, from Seattle to Ashland, to compete in matches. This meant that Jacob was spending many hours with his father, growing closer and cementing the strong bond that the two share today.

“We spent so much time together,” Dennis says. “There were many matches where his was the last one of the night and we would have to be there till late in the night.”

Jacob is someone who values his family greatly, and they have become some of his biggest backers in return.

“It is really nice to have support no matter what I do,” Jacob says. “They support me in everything. It is great because it is like having a traveling fan club.”

Jacob’s mother is April, who works at Molalla elementary school, and he is the middle child of five in the Tomlin household. He has two younger sisters, Amanda, 13, and Laura, 16, and an older sister Sarah, 19 and a brother Justin, 25. His sister is especially passionate about her younger brother’s exploits on the mat and when he lost in the semi’s his freshman year, she took it almost hard as he did.

“I think that my older sister almost had a nervous breakdown,” Tomlin says. “I think that she was more upset than I was. It was pretty intense.”

Tomlin has reshaped the face of Colton wrestling and will go down in history as the first three-time state champion from the high school; it is the type of achievement that will have reverberations in the Colton community and mat room for years to come.

“I think that it is great for the program to have super-good wrestlers in the mat room because everyone around them gets better,” Colton wrestling coach Kerry Benthin says of Jacob’s presence on the team.

Over the years Jacob has refined his techniques and has gotten to the point where wrestlers will avoid the weight class that he intends to compete in.

“Jacob is above everybody, he really dominates a match,” Benthin says. “He is at a different level than most kids.”

During his senior season Jacob almost saw his revised dreams of three state titles evaporate as he was knocked down by an intense bout of mononucleosis.
“The low point in my high school career was probably this year when I had mono and I was out for quite a bit,” Jacob said.

The doctors were not even sure if Jacob would be able to get back to the mat at all during his senior season.

“When I found out that he was diagnosed with mono I thought ‘maybe it is a bad diagnosis, maybe we should get a second opinion,’” Dennis recalls. “He was bedridden for quite sometime because he had a pretty intense case. It was tough for me because I saw him dealing with the fact that he might not be able to accomplish what he set out to do.”
Jacob was able to come back strong and down the sickness quicker than some might have expected.

“I wasn’t surprised that he came back from it,” Dennis says. “If anyone was going to come back from that, he was going to come back from it.”

Jacob’s next step is to wrestle at the collegiate level and that brings up some difficult decisions.

“I have been talking a lot to my dad and some other people about what I want to do and where I want to go,” Jacob says. “I am stuck on the fence between a Division 1 school and a community college. I think that a community college is going to be a lot easier of a transition for me. I defiantly think that it is a huge decision. I am really confused about it I guess. It is such a big decision.”

Tomlin wants to continue to be involved in wrestling after his own competition days are over. He wants to be a coach at some level and either work as a high school teacher or in forest management.

Those huge goals that were bouncing around in Jacob Tomlin’s head when he was just a freshman have not come into reality in exactly the way that Jacob had wanted but they are not tarnished. Jacob has set records and has a bright future ahead of him and now he can sit back and enjoy the rest of his senior year and be satisfied with a stellar high school wrestling career.

“When you are done and you look back and it is kind of like your masterpiece,” Jacob says. “You have got to be happy.”

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Playing Through

Most children only need to worry about school assignments and fitting in that extra hour of play before the sun hides behind the horizon.
Most children certainly do not have to worry about complicated blood-sugar levels and injecting needles into themselves.

Emily Knight and Korey Anderson were not most children.
Knight, now a regular contributor for the Colton girls basketball team, and Anderson, now the starting point guard for the Colton boys team, found out they had juvenile diabetes when they were kids.

That means that worrying about their blood-sugar and poking themselves with needles became a part of their everyday lives. Take out the trash, do your homework and adjust the amount of insulin you need to take for the turkey you are about to eat.

“There is no cure,” Knight says. “It means that your body doesn’t produce any insulin so you have to take it in injections.”

Juvenile diabetes, also known as type 1 diabetes, is not to be confused with type 2 diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, type 2 diabetes can largely be managed by adjusting diet and being active, and is the result of the body’s inability to use insulin effectively; type 1, or juvenile, diabetes denotes a body’s failure to produce insulin at all. Insulin is a hormone that converts sugars, starches and other foods into energy that the body can use in day to day activity.

The reason that type 1 diabetes is commonly known as juvenile diabetes is that it most often comes on in children and young adults. For Knight and Anderson, they found out at a very young age.

“I was eight years old, it came on really gradually, I was just really thirsty and eventually I was so weak they took me to the doctor,” Knight says.

Knight’s mother, Laura also remembers the condition coming on gradually, but when things started getting very serious she rushed her in to see someone.

“It even got to the point where she was having trouble breathing so we knew we should really check it out,” Laura says. “And just on the basis of one blood test they knew exactly what it was.”

For Anderson, the onset of the disease came on at a later age.

“I was in fifth grade and I was just at football practice one day and I felt sick,” Anderson remembers. On that day his mother, Mary, came to practice to bring him a piece of football gear that he had forgotten and she immediately saw that something was wrong with her son; he looked emaciated.

“He looked really pale and he just didn’t look right,” Mary Anderson says. When they took him into the hospital, the doctor had a hunch right away. After a few tests, they knew that he had type 1 diabetes. Korey spent one day in intensive care at Legacy Emanuel Hospital.

A Shift in Life

Circumstances in life can shift reality. Finding out that you or someone you love has a disease like type 1 diabetes is one such circumstance.

“It was a shock,” Laura says. “It was a condition that was not only life-threatening but it would be with her for her whole life. We just had to deal with it. It was about a year and a half after she had lost her dad so I wanted to do everything I could to make it easy for her.”

For the Anderson’s, it was a point where they knew that the rest of their lives would be changed.

“I had seen that before, so at least from my perspective having that hit so close to home is akin to someone showing up on an accident and seeing someone they know,” Korey’s father, Kevin Anderson, who has been a Emergency Medical Technician for 20 years, recalls. “I immediately started thinking about the amount of work it was going to be. It was a moment I knew that our life and his life had changed completely. I knew that Mary and the rest of our family didn’t know the long-term complications associated with it, and I did. I was probably feeling a little more sick-to-my-stomach about what was in store for him.”

Korey’s mother felt the same shifting of reality.

“It was kind of like my world dropped,” Mary remembers. “I had never known anyone who was diabetic and so it was a shock. I just remember walking in a zone, it was so unreal.”
With the support of their friends and family, both Korey and Emily have been able to step up to the new challenges and meet them head-on with a good attitude. The two have taken on their diabetes and have made it a part of their everyday life.

Bright Spots

Emily Knight and Korey Anderson are two of the nicest kids anyone will have the pleasure of meeting; they just happen to have diabetes. They are optimistic about the challenges in their lives and work every day to manage them; but they do not go about it on their own.

“I didn’t really have any fear because of all of the support I had from my family and friends,” Emily says. Emily has five brothers and sisters starting with Jessie 24, Karissa 23, Kasey 19, Sarah 13, and Anjuli 11.

Shortly after Emily was diagnosed, Laura made each member of the family inject her with insulin at least once so they knew what to do in case of emergency.

“The first thing that we did was we made everybody in the family aware of what to do (if Emily needed an injection of insulin) and each one of them had to give her a shot at one point,” Laura says.

Juvenile diabetes has not held them back in basketball. They test their blood-sugar levels before games and sometimes at halftime, but they can usually feel when something is off.

“You feel like throwing up,” Emily says. “If I have a low blood-sugar (level) then I can’t concentrate at all so I have to have juice right away.”

“I feel really sick and I get tired easier,” Korey says.

Korey uses insulin pens, needles inside of a casing that make injections easier, and he counts up the carbohydrates in whatever food he is about to eat and then injects the appropriate amount of insulin into his system.

Emily uses an insulin pump, a gift from her uncle, which consistently puts the appropriate amount of insulin into her system throughout the day. She takes the pump off when she is showering or in games and practices.

Korey and Emily have had slip-ups taking care of their diabetes. One summer Korey was at a basketball camp and he miscounted his carbohydrates.

“We were getting ready to play and right before the game I felt my blood sugar plummet and I had to drink an energy drink and sit out for the whole first half,” Korey says.

Before the season began, Colton boys basketball coach Greg Adams was a little concerned about not having a back-up point guard in case something happened to Korey. However Korey has responded by making it a non-issue for the season.

“It has never bothered him all year, he has been able to play every game,” Adams said. “He has stepped up.”

Making it Normal

Living with juvenile diabetes is something that Korey and Emily have taken responsibility of.

“He (Korey) never complained about it, he never said, ‘why me,’ he just figured, ‘this is how God wanted me to be,’” Korey’s mother Mary says.

“She (Emily) knew that it was a very serious thing and that she had to deal with it,” Emily’s mother Laura says. “I am sure there were times that she was saddened that she had to deal with it and that she was different than others but on the whole she has had a really positive outlook on it.”

Emily and Korey took over the responsibility of caring for themselves sooner rather than later.

“My mom did it all at first, but within a year I was doing everything by myself,” Emily says.

It was important for Laura that her daughter learned how to take care of herself as soon as possible.

“We wanted her to have the freedom to go away from us and we wanted to get her independent as soon as we could,” she says.

The Day to Day

Living with diabetes is just another aspect of life for Korey, and in the long-run has probably made them stronger people.

“For me it was kind of an epiphany,” Korey’s father Kevin says. “I think that for me to look at him and see what he is doing at his age, he truly is my hero because he does things that I couldn’t do.”

Emily’s mother Laura agrees.

“She is just terrific,” she says. “She has done such a great job. She is proactive and she doesn’t sit around and feel sorry for herself.”

However positively both kids take on the challenges associated with having type 1 diabetes, there are still hardships associated with the condition.

“I’m still sometimes nervous about doing it in public, so I will use the bathroom or something,” Korey says.

Emily is a little bit more open and talks to whoever wants to about her condition.

“I tell them offhand,” she says. “They will ask me what I am doing when I am taking my blood-sugar. They are really curious about it because a lot of people don’t know about it. People stare sometimes, but they are pretty cool. I have gotten used to it so it is not a big deal.”

Sometimes it is hard for the people closest to Emily and Korey to watch them do things that most other teenagers do not have to worry about.

“It hurts to see him take so many shots and yet I have to remember that there are some people with things far worse,” Korey’s mother Mary says. “This is something where he can live and have a long life as long as he is on top of it.”

The Future

The medical field is something that both Emily and Korey want to enter in to. Emily wants to be a doctor and Korey wants to be an EMT like his father.

No matter how their futures turn out, both already have significant life victories under their belts.

“It goes beyond being proud, it speaks to his character,” Korey’s father Kevin says of the way his son has dealt with diabetes. “I always think of a man’s character as what you do when people aren’t watching, and how you deal with life, and he has far exceeded those expectations at an early age.”

Both players participate in an annual walk and run to raise money for diabete’s research.

“It is important to get as much support as we can for it,” Emily says.

They have also inspired members of the community.

Two years ago, Korey’s sister Nicole, raised almost 900 dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Hopes, Dreams

When circumstances change and realities shift, the future is not spared from the revision. Korey and Emily’s parents wish for what most parents wish for their children—success, happiness and love—but they also hope for other things.

“Well of course we are all holding out for a cure,” Emily’s mother Laura says. “And it seems like whenever we hear news they are getting closer and closer. I want her to stay active and keep her blood sugar low, and she is going to make it by golly!”

There is also some measure good that can be taken from the experience as it has brought the families closer together.

“We are probably closer than he would like sometimes,” Korey’s father Kevin says. “As a teenager you would sometimes like to distance yourself from your parents a little.”

Sure most teenagers their age can eat burgers, fries and sodas whenever they like and not have to deal with insulin and blood-sugar levels but Emily and Korey are not most teenagers. They are an aspiring doctor and EMT, basketball players and people—young people that just happen to have type 1 diabetes.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Big Cat

Raw Talent

Coming into Ashley Coleman’s senior season of softball at Molalla High School, the tall and talented player was in a bad spot. She was not seeing extended playing time and she felt like she was being pigeon-holed into the designated hitter spot. She was frustrated and felt like she was out of the loop; it was a far cry from where Ashley is today—a big hitting softball player on a full ride scholarship at Florida Institute of Technology with collegiate accolades a plenty and the nickname of Big Cat.

For Coleman, who has played some form of softball her entire life, the beginning her senior season things were not as bright.

“When I got (Coleman) her senior year, she wasn’t very mentally strong because she played DH and she never got to play much,” Molalla High School softball coach Chip Dickenson remembers.
Ashley and one other girl were the only seniors on the team though, so Dickenson knew that he needed them. “I sat them (the two seniors) down and said ‘hey, I need leadership. I need you girls to show up and lead by example.’”

Coleman responded.

Ashley began to work harder and refine her raw hitting power into a force to be reckoned with; and she also began to take interest in guiding the younger players on the team. Two of those players, Cassie Dickenson and Kendra Guest, are now seniors on the team and are in spots of leadership themselves.

“That was just awesome,” Dickenson says of when Ashley took the two freshmen under her wing. “She has got a great personality, she is funny but she can be serious when she needs to be—and the girls listen to her.”

Ashley had a successful senior season but as time was running out on her last year of high school softball, she was still unsure about her future.

“When I was in my senior year I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” Coleman explains.
It was then that Dickenson stepped in and offered to help.

“I told her, ‘if you want to move on then I will find you a place,’” Dickenson says. He knew Coleman would be able to excel anywhere.

“That is one kid that I would have liked to have for three or four years,” Dickenson says. “She is probably one of the most gifted players to come out of Molalla. She can hit the softball probably harder than anyone that I have ever seen.”

Dickenson started working the phone lines; telling all of his contacts in the collegiate softball world about this tall girl who could smack the ball a mile.

First stop—Weed

A college six hours south in Weed, California was interested. The College of the Siskiyous and their coach, Doug Eastman, wanted Ashley, so she packed up and drove down for tryouts.

“I was a little bit nervous because it was a college tryout,” Ashley remembers.
While Ashley liked the team and the school, it was Eastman who really sold her on being part of the program.

“He was just a really great coach,” Coleman says. “He was just really smart about the game and he was really personable and he wasn’t just about softball; he would help you out with whatever you needed help with.”

Eastman was as equally pleased with the 5’11” girl from Oregon.

“One of the things I liked about her right away was her size and her strength,” Eastman says. “She was just a big, strong girl. She was that force on the offensive side where we knew at any given time she could hit a ball out of the yard.”

Coleman ended up a success down south, but that does not mean she was completely comfortable with leaving Molalla right away.

“It got time for her to go and she didn’t want to leave Molalla, and for a second there I didn’t think that she was going to go,” high school coach Chip Dickenson remembers. “But then we had a sit-down talk and I said ‘you know honey, it is a long way away but you should just go and try it because if you don’t like it you can always come back to Molalla.”

Even though Ashley had doubts about moving, the draw of a new adventure and the prospect of travel trumped them.

“Naturally I was hesitant about moving to go to school that was a good distance away from home,” Ashley recalls. “I didn’t know a soul down there in California and there were other options that I could’ve chosen that were ‘safer.’ Everyone I knew from high school was either staying in Molalla to work or going away with a friend. I was about to go out on my own alone. The one thought that really pushed me to go to the Siskiyous was that I was going to be seeing California—traveling and playing ball. I thought ‘what a great way to spend a couple of years.’”

Welcome to California

What a great way indeed to spend a couple of years. Ashley went all of the way down to California, left her friends, family and team, but ended up doing the exact same thing that she did at home—knocking the leather off of softballs.

“She was just a force at the offensive side,” Eastman says.

Ashley’s hitting was so special that an opposing coach described a homerun she hit as the hardest he had ever seen a softball smashed.

Ashley, driven to succeed, played mainly DH again in Weed, but she carved out a niche for herself in the spot and became invaluable to the team.

“That is what kind of made her special,” Eastman says. “You don’t always find a player like that who will just work on her hitting and do a great job when you call on her.”

To sit in the dugout and only get to play when your number is called to bat is something that would rattle a lot of other players but Coleman has her strategies to stay sharp.

“I don’t sit down, I really have to keep myself up and into the game and watch every pitch,” Ashley says. “I think that one of the hardest things is to try and not dwell on if you did badly in your last at-bat because you have so much time to think about it.”

Much of Coleman’s success generated from her strong work ethic. She was always one of the first to show up at practice and one of the last to leave. This was especially true in the weight room, which she poured herself into, and where she became a team leader.

“She was defiantly a leader, and more so than anyone in the weight room,” Eastman remembers. “She can out-lift anyone I have ever had down here. If anyone was not working hard on a specific day she would let them know it.”

A picture of Coleman lifting is still in place on the team’s website.

A hard past shaping a good future

While Ashley’s work ethic showed bright at the College of the Siskiyous, where she was named to two all-conference teams and an all-star team and set a school record with 15 homeruns, it is a characteristic that showed at a very young age.

In the fifth grade, Ashley suffered a wrist injury that made it impossible for her to play.

“From Ashley's very early years she has always been deeply invested in her team's success,” Ashley’s mother, Cindy Coleman remembers. “(After the injury) she insisted on attending all practices as well as games to support her team.”

That work ethic and drive to succeed is all the more impressive when it is contrasted against the traumatic things that Coleman has had to endure, starting at a young age.

“Ashley's grown up knowing love and support,” Cindy says. “She lost both her brother and her father at a young age and from that (she) values life very differently than most people her age.”
Coleman agrees that the tragedies suffered early on have shaped who she is today.

“I definitely know that my childhood has a lot to do with the thick skin I have now,” Ashley says. “My childhood was a tough one, but I would not change anything, because it has a lot to do with who I am today. Certain things made me grow up a lot faster and become independent at a young age. I grew to rely on myself and nobody else. It made me a very strong person mentally, and the physical toughness soon followed. I went through a lot as a kid, which makes it easier to endure the struggles I’m faced with as an adult.”

One of those struggles that Ashley faced was when she had a quadriceps injury and had to sit out for a couple of weeks. Suddenly she was faced with not being able to push and use her body the way she normally did.

“I basically had to sit out for a while and every time I tried to get back in it I would pull it again and it just kept getting worse and worse,” Ashley remembers. “That was the hardest for me to adjust to not being able to do physically what I knew I could do mentally. I have always been able to push my body but when I was actually not able to push myself any more was a pretty bad point.”

That challenge, like most in her life, was something that Ashley pushed through and the more she played the better she got. Ashley even earned her nickname—Big Cat.

“She is just one of those players that is bigger than everyone else and stronger than everyone else and I have a saying where they make a good play I will say it was like a cat, and I changed it to like a big cat (for Ashley),” Eastman says.

The next step

As Ashley’s time in Northern California wound down, she knew that she did not want to stop playing softball. She sent her skills tape to various schools, all with one characteristic in common—warm weather.

“I pretty much wanted an adventure,” Ashley says. “I looked for places next to a beach. I wanted to feel like I was on vacation.”

Out of all the schools that Ashley inquired about, Florida Institute of Technology was the best fit. It had warm weather, a good education and a full ride.

And so Ashley, who plans on becoming a personal trainer and is studying psychology, packed her bags and bat and set off for a completely new beginning, this time thousands of miles away. By now however, going solo is something she is used to and can draw strength from.

“I think what fuels me most is just being on my own,” Ashley says. “I may not be completely independent when it comes to certain things, but being so far away from family and friends, makes it seem that way. I have never been afraid to step outside my comfort zone, and that has made me a stronger person in the long run. First moving away to California, then here to Florida, I have never had an old friend or family member there with me to turn to or to rely on to get me motivated. I’ve always had to look within myself for things like that. I am the only person I have to answer to at the end of the day. If I don’t work hard or do the things I need to do, I don’t feel right. In a nutshell, I contribute a lot of my success to stepping outside that comfort zone; putting myself out there where I might be uncomfortable, but never allowing myself to take a step back—only forward. It has shown me what I’m made of and I take that confidence with me to the plate every day.”

Ashley is doing well in Florida, the third major layover in her life, on and off the playing field.

“I just received a letter from F.I.T. that Ashley made the dean's list,” Cindy Coleman says. “She's all about ‘you get out what you put into it.’ She has unrelenting stamina with a focus on her future. As a parent I couldn't ask for anymore. I am truly blessed.”

Florida Institute of Technology is enjoying a successful season with an overall record of 28-10 and even though Ashley is not playing as much as she might be used to she is still happy in Florida.

“This is my high point,” Ashley says of playing in Florida. “This is the first time where I am at a spot where I can recognize that how hard I have worked has gotten me here.”

The love you give comes back in the end.
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Hard Work

Athletes routinely push themselves to the point of exhaustion. They come up to the brink of pain and discomfort that most people try and avoid at all costs and then push right on through it; choosing to endure momentary pain in favor of lasting glory.

The common goal tying their work and sweat together is the fact that competitors in any type of sport strive to be on the top.

Molalla area student athletes routinely cut into their social lives in order to put extra time in the weight room or gym. They push back the temptation to go home and relax after a long day of class to run another mile in the rain or work yet again on the mechanics of a swing.

This type of commitment to sport is not for everyone, and usually the line between great and mediocre boils down to mental toughness. Can you hack it or not?

It is not something that is often acknowledged.

Many times people point to athleticism and talent to explain success and often neglect to consider just how much an individual’s commitment to improvement really plays out in the equation; how much those hours away from the stage really benefit the brief moments of glory.

“I will take hard work over talent any day of the week,” Molalla track coach Gary Fischer said.

His track team is primed for a run at the state title this year with many talented and athletic kids on the Indian roster—but without hard work and mental composure, it would all be for not.
It is not something that has completely slipped from the collective psyche of our society. The importance of mental toughness, the type of attitude that shows up after much hard word, shows up routinely in common sayings.

Get your head in the game.

He was in the zone.

He is a clutch shooter.

There is no muscle on the body that makes a person more in-tune in a game. There is no amount of repetitions that will make a person stronger in the clutch. That is, no muscle outside of the brain.

All of those hours in the gym, and all of those miles pounded away under the soles of running shoes do help in the physical sense. Athletes increase their strength and are able to throw a ball further; they pump up their endurance and can run faster for a longer amount of time.
However arguably the biggest thing that all of those sore muscles give to the kids playing competitive sports is a mental edge.

A baseball player will know that he has done everything that he can in practice to be able to swing the bat to the best of his ability in a game. This knowledge frees him, to some extent, of self-doubt. He has the mental edge to be able to let loose and are not be hampered from the sort of un-assuredness that so easily can creep into a player’s mind.

This weekend I went snowboarding. I am usually a skier, and even though I do sports that are similar, I surf (very badly) and skate (even worse), I figured to spend much of my time laying face down in a snow bank contemplating just how many people heard me cry out for help as a flew down the mountain out of control.

For the first few runs mountain I fulfilled my own prophecy and saw stars after a few hard crashes; however after a while I grew less and less afraid of falling, because I was doing it so often, and I started to improve. Soon I was going faster and through more varied terrain.
My mind was free of its own constraints.

I had broken through the invisible barrier where my mind was limiting my body.
For athletes in sports, practice is like falling in the snow. They have worked through the right and wrong way to do things time and time again behind closed doors in the gyms and fields of practice and so when the time comes in a big game or meet, they know exactly how they should play.

Their mind is free to succeed because they have broken through and gained the mental toughness that means so much to champion players and teams. Their mind is primed and ready.

They have their head in the game.

They can get in the zone.

They are free to be a clutch shooter.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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