There were a lot of factors that changed my motivation from when I jumped in high school to jumping in college now. In high school, track and field was just a side sport for me, since then, I have made it into a career as I’m entering my sixth year of jumping.
In high school I had no expectations for my success as a jumper. My motivation for track was soccer season and being prepared for the Fall season. There was no pressure to be the best since this was a brand new sport for me. When I realized I had a knack for jumping, winning quickly became a motivation. I realized that I had the potential to win my conference in high jump. Just as I had been successful in all my previous athletic endeavors I wanted excel in track now. I think jumping was easy for me because there were no expectations. Anything I did at a meet was great as long as I put my best effort into it and I think this is why I fell in love with track. No one in my family had ever ran track and I had no one to compare myself to, I could pave my own way to success and that’s what I did and why I wanted to continue track and field in college.
For once I was competing in a sport that my family had no knowledge of. I loved teaching my parents that a relay race can be called a 4×200, not a 2×4 like my mom commonly refers to it as (I have to remind her track and field has no relation to the Home Depot). College was a place where I could enjoy competing and have the hopes of improving upon the skills I gained in high school.
Once I was a college athlete, my motivation to improve was my previous success in high school. I thought that with all the new coaching advice and training programs things could only go up from here. Boy was I WRONG. My freshman year of college I couldn’t get back to my personal bests in high school, it was brutal. You feel like a failure but I trusted in my coaches training program and used my older teammates’ success as an indicator that if I was patient and trusted in the program I too would see positive results. That motivator worked for me as I peaked my athletic performance at the end of my sophomore year. You think the story only gets better from here but I decided to transfer and now my track career is on a whole new route, read about it here.
lazyjumper 