"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
Winston Churchill
A bit of a late weekly update but it is here. Last week was midterms and I was surprised to only have one test. My only actual test midterm was in psychology on definitions and topics that we had gone over earlier in the year and I passed with flying colors. However, my other classes were either papers and one will be a speech. When I asked my teachers why they don't give test which to me seemed to be the standard they all replied with something along the lines of, "it isn't relevant to what you are learning in this class." The moment I heard my teachers say that I instantly knew that my education here was going to be different because everything that I am learning in class I am instantly using, I am not leaving it in my brain for a later time I am learning how to use it in the world right away and I love that. I always struggled in school with information because I would receive it and not know what to do with it, where it would be used and how. When my teachers are having us use our the information we learn in speeches and research papers I am instantly shown what I am learning and how it will be used by me in the future.
Now tennis this week had a bit of an interesting turn. We had three matches in three days and that took a big hit on my body. The difference between hurt and being injured can sometimes be very thin and can change very quickly. On Saturday during warm up I felt a bit of pressure in my rib, thinking it was just some soreness and it might of been my abs I played Saturday but walked of the court in tears after despite winning. The pain had progressed and it got to the point where the pain had become worse and worrying. But I still didn't decide whether I was on the hurt or injured side of the line and without scans and thorough investigating only I could decide. On Sunday we played again and I was in pain again but I told my coach I was fine and could play. I was able to play out doubles with my partner although we lost the doubles point as a team I was able to support my teammates in doubles but when I got to singles as my teammate said it was hard to watch. The pain had gotten so bad that I was wheezing and no longer moving properly and my coach noticed. He took it upon himself to pull me off. In the moment I was so mad but now I am grateful because I know I would have pushed myself too far to try to play and it could have been so much worse. Our third match I didn't even step off the court and helped coach the girls while they played. As a teammate to know that you didn't contribute to a match where all your fellow teammates are also in some sort of pain is so hard. We didn't do as well as we had hoped but I know after these past couple days of recovery this coming weekend we have a chance to do good.
SPOTLIGHT!
This week I am going to spotlight injury in sports. As someone who has had her fair share of injuries as an athlete this is something that not only obviously affects an athlete's physical health but also affect their mental health. Athletes who really love their sports become so addicted to the sport it becomes a sort of drug and when this happens even a day without it hurts. Injuries become your worst enemy not only because it breaks your body and changes it in a way that will never go back to normal but because it pulls you away from your sport, takes you out for days, weeks, months at a time and leaves athletes reeling. Now the difference between being injured and being hurt is so small yet so large. Being hurt is something that is pain but doesn't necessarily affect the way you perform. Soreness after a workout is a great example of being hurt and a common case where you would say, "my legs are hurting" but something that becomes worse where you body cannot physically perform turns into an injury. The line between the two is so fine, and can change so quickly it is easy for an athlete to go from hurt to injured in an instant to keep playing and once they do become injured then their mental health is in danger. As someone who went through a major injury the hardest part of recovering was mentally having to tell my body to stay still as it screamed at me to get onto a tennis court. As I watched my body get weaker because I couldn't exercise like I was before injury my mental health deteriorated and I had everyone around me trying to distract me from it all. Now this past weekend standing watching my teammates play while I could do nothing with my tennis racket to help because of an injury I didn't want to make worse was so hard because not only am I letting down myself and my own body I am letting down my teammates and to me doing nothing to help. The loss this weekend became worse and harder to accept knowing that I didn't help in a way I wanted to which was on the court. The mental side of sports is something that is not watched closely enough and it costs countless athletes their lives. I want to also spotlight organizations like Hilinski's Hope who work to help support athletes mental health! To read more from them go tohttps://www.hilinskishope.org
This is me doing cupping for my shoulder to help it continue killing serves!
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