I was only fifteen at the time.  I should not have had to start worrying about the rest of my life, but unfortunately it was inevitable. I was at a time in my life where everything was changing so drastically and so unexpectedly that I never knew what was coming my way.  Nothing had been same as how it used to be when I was a six year old kid.  It was hard realizing I had to grow up to and had to enjoy life in the moment because it was not always going to be the way I wanted it to be.  I was at that point where I would have done anything to be a kid again.  I did not want to have to worry about college, whether it was the next big step in life or not.

It was already scary enough to know that I had to find a college based on my academic needs, but to throw soccer into the search it made everything ten times harder.  School was obviously not my favorite thing, but it was nobody's favorite either.  Realizing that soccer was a ginormous part of college, it made me question how good I was and I continuously had to ask myself if I was going to be able to make it to the collegiate level.  I was getting five or six tests a week and I usually had practice four times a week an hour away for two hours.  I hated having to balance and manage the two of them out because it was not as easy.  It was the beginning of something that I was not ready for.  Trying to understand that college was the first step to adulthood was very hard for me and something I needed to adapt to. I remember that I hated thinking that I would eventually have to leave my family to start my own life.

Growing up was always a foreign concept that I did not want to listen to nor believe in.  I cried when I turned thirteen because I realized I was finally a teenager. I was not excited for that in the least bit.  It was strange though because when I went to soccer practice, I started to forget about the anxiety that I had from college and schoolwork.  It was like a light switched off and I was able to just give my undivided attention to my practice.  Without a ball at my feet though, I always loathed having to be home doing my schoolwork. I remember my mom always saying that schoolwork always came before soccer, but I never really listened to her.  I knew that school and academics was going to be a huge part of where I ended up at college, but I did not really care.  I did not want to grow up and have to worry about what grades I received and how much I had to study.  I remembered thinking that I was never going to be able to go through the recruiting process because I was just too scared to grow up.

I never really understood why someone actually had to grow up.  I mean I knew it was just the way life worked, but why did it have to be now that I had to reflect on my life, and to decide where I was going to go to college. I remember the day after a big tournament,  my mom was on the phone with my coach and they were talking about colleges.  I always got so mad at my mom because I did not want to hear about it. I did not want to hear about college anymore. I did not want to see that my life was changing, right before my eyes.  I did not want to acknowledge that I would have to talk to college coaches. I did not want to recognize the difference and changing of my life,  compared to when I was young.

I remember one time when my coach told me to call this college coach.  I fought with my mom for hours. I cried. I was dreading that this was now the time where I had to make the call to a college.  I just thought to myself the whole time that I was still a kid and I wondered why I was doing this now rather than two years from now.  I did not expect everything to change so suddenly.  This call was really what made me realize that I had to reevaluate everything about me and that I had to change and adapt.