leave room.
3 Takeaways:
Leave room for the daydream, but never lose sight of the goal.
Keep it loose. Expand the idea of what “plans” look like to you.
Coaches will either believe in you or they won’t. It’s your decision on how you cultivate a work ethic through that.
2 Quotes:
“Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back… play for her.” —Mia Hamm
“Let yourself move within it, yet not be of it.” Rick Rubin
1 Story:
Movement is in my bones. I have been an athlete my entire life. I define an athlete as someone who would like to pursue a feeling or satisfaction while moving the body in a skillful way. Yes it gets tricky when we talk about athletic sports and skillful sports, and if they are two different things, I’m not ready to peel that onion quite yet. Moving on.
While the word Olympian is now forever attached to my name, most of my childhood athletic career screamed “B-team” status. When I was 11, I decided that I would try out for select soccer, club, whatever. Every year, I would be put on the B team and it was devastating. Every summer, I would work harder. I went to the gym and took circuit classes. I would take a left hand turn out of the gym doors to run down the slough to sixty acres, the soccer fields, to play and proceed to run back to the gym to have my parents pick me up. I understood my hard work would pay off. At a tournament my senior year I was spotted by one college coach, he took a chance on me.
I graduated from college with a degree in fine art and graphic design in 2008. I am an artist at heart with a passion for elite peak performance. Creativity drives my love for sport. Most everything I read has something to do with movement or psychology. I have been fascinated with how the body and mind connect under pressure and how we bring one back to self. I have had a vision to be able to study and dive deep into a subject the way I was able to with each of my sports and give back to my community. I was just never sure how that would evolve.
10 years ago, a small wacky bunch of humans took a chance on me in Fort Mill, South Carolina that launched my career into a sport that would forever change my life. Weightlifting.
15 years ago I graduated from college when the market crashed and no one wanted to hire an artist
Now, after weeks of being waitlisted for a month and a half, feeling like education was never going to agree with me, I was accepted into grad school. A school that will bring language and techniques that bridge the gap that I have spent my whole life studying.
I am constantly being surprised at where my life takes me when I leave myself open to the opportunity of the unknown. I didn’t know then that my body refused to ever fail me. It chose me. It was the expression of the journey I was prepared for.
August starts a 3 year masters program in somatic psychology.
If I didn’t have the coaches that believed in me and the ones that didn’t along the way, I would not have the emotional understanding that I do of sport and how it correlates to life. I would not have been able to pursue sport at a high level without experiencing every emotion.
I’m so encouraged about this next stage of my life and I can’t wait to share the knowledge along the way with you so we can collaborate and create a language that supports athletes in and out of sport.
Let’s be great,
m
