Coming to terms with the mortality of success remains the harshest reality to strike me in the past two years.

The summer before I started college I won two national championships in the high jump and competed at the 2014 World Junior Championship. Since my junior year of high school I believed I was going nowhere but up, and my successes only reinforced the naïve belief.

If the 17-year-old version of myself could see me now, she would not believe we are the same person.

I started jumping my freshman year of high school. I came from a family of volleyball players, but I never wanted to associate myself with my sisters’ interests. Essentially coached by a school priest and YouTube videos, I took to the event quickly and became passionate about every aspect of jumping. Freshman year was a season of constant improvement. I hit a slump in my sophomore year, which led me to make a series of influential changes, the greatest being the decision to devote myself to my faith.

I began devotional sessions every evening, reading the Bible and writing about how the message spoke to me. I attended church every Sunday with my parents, and rarely took a Sunday off, even when I was traveling. My junior season began with a personal record, and ended with a state championship after finishing first in every meet of the season. Through the entire season I made it a point to recognize my trusting relationship with God as the reason for all success. I continued this mentality into my senior season, and I continued to get better.

On the morning of the New Balance Outdoor National Championship, I attended church with my parents. I found a small Catholic church in Greensboro, NC, which is now one of the most memorable churches I have ever visited.

When it came time to compete, I had total trust in God.

Not one part of me was nervous. I knew that I had prepared as much as I could, and it was now in God’s hands. Throughout the competition I remained in constant conversation with God. I never asked for a victory. I simply just asked for His presence. I went on to win the competition without a single miss and achieved a new personal record. I used my faith in the next championship two weeks later and the success continued. The great change came after the world championship.

I slowly began to believe my success was a result of my own work. My focus shifted from God to myself. I transitioned into an arrogant and ungrateful athlete. I can remember throwing fits at my parents when I did not get what I want, at one point exclaiming, “I did this all on my own. You had nothing to do with it.” I had truly let the success consume me. I broke promises I made to myself and to God. Going into college, I believed there was no way I could fall down. I convinced myself I would continue to progress the way I had been the past two years.

Boy, did I get slapped with humility! I never stopped working hard. I never missed a day of practice. I never gave up on my dreams. However, I did give up on the one thing that got me to where I am, my faith and humility. College has absolutely not gone as planned. I jump significantly lower than I did as a senior in high school. Some days it even feels as though I am continuing to fall down into a hole and there’s no way out. In all of this pain and struggle, I have matured and learned more about myself than I ever would have had everything gone as planned. You don’t truly realize what you are blessed with until you are knocked down scrambling to get back up.

It only hit me in the past few months what really changed about me.

Now, I make it my goal to find my faith again and remain humble, so when I get back up and find success again, I won’t allow the same arrogance to creep in. I no longer believe my success is inevitable. I understand nothing is a guarantee.

I have been taught more by failure than success could ever teach me. None of this means that I have accepted failure or that I am content with where I am, and I shouldn’t be! You are allowed to be upset by your failures.

To pull a quote from Meredith Grey, “Progress looks like a bunch of failures. And you can have feelings about that because it’s sad, but you can’t fall apart.” It isn’t always about how you feel about failure; it’s about what you do to keep yourself together so you can move forward. I choose to use my faith to hold me together.

Find what keeps you grounded, let that pull you to the top, and know that some things are greater than success. As I begin to focus more on humility, I try to keep a verse from Proverbs in mind: “Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud, but before honor comes humility” (Proverbs 18:12).

When I was younger, the things I disliked about myself the most was my ethnicity, my legs, and my constant thinking. It took me many years to realize that these differences were my strengths.

The first time someone asked me “what I was” (See Explaining Your Ethnic Situation), I was five or six and confidently stated, “White.” I thought that was the correct answer to any and all situations, or I didn’t know what they were talking about.

Up until then—growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta—I had a suspicion I was something other than white. We spoke in a different language at home; cooked with a lot of spices and ate fermented foods; and, most obviously, I looked different. Yes, these were differences, but could they possibly amount to something important like identity? It marked the introduction of an identity crisis.

Not much time passed after that initial encounter before I realized I was Korean. It was only hours later my brother informed me of the truth over a fit of laughter, realizing his little sister thought she was white. Being that young, I remember thinking, “So what does this mean?”

For the better part of the next decade, I was determined to find out what being Korean didn’t mean.

I could have non-Asian friends, I could choose Britney or Ludacris over Korean music, and I was free to layer myself in Hollister (Hello 2000’s).

I was as enthusiastic about being Korean as I was when my mom bought me a congratulatory cake for getting my period. It’s true… No ethnic background could have saved me from pressing myself into the mold I perceived as southern suburbia.

I have always had large, muscular legs—or what kids would call tree trunks—something I inherited from my dad. At age twelve, I started training harder for tennis and my legs grew wider and all the more muscular, making it impossible to find good jeans (still a problem).

Kids made it clear that I was different, gargantuan, and beastlike. And that was reason enough for me to be mad that they were stuck on my body—and I thought they were u-g-l-y, ugly.

There’s the age preschoolers hit when they become walking and wailing broken records stuck on “Why?” They ask, or rather, demand whys regardless of the explanation. Despite a little less wailing, I never quite grew out of that phase; I posed questions to myself and turned the answers over and over until I thought of more questions.

People like to say to me, “Don’t overthink it.” If there was a penny for every time someone offered me that piece of advice, the world would be drowned in a flood of pennies. I believe I do have a “rich inner life,” as the great Amy Schumer puts it.

I’ve fallen mercy to it in situations where being present and interaction with others is expected. Socializing, I think is what they call it. It often felt debilitating; I’d think out my responses, weighing them against the replies I’d thought I’d get.

I loathed these differences about myself; I wished instead to not think. I wished to be carefree and say whatever floated into my mind. It recently dawned on me there’s a term for that—drunkenness.

And so, my inner monologue was also one of self-criticism. Sure, children can be cruel, but none are worse than your own demons that feed on your insecurities.

The commonality among all of these qualities was that they each made me different; they made me feel different because I didn’t match up to the people around me. The essence of what I craved was acceptance. Our default setting is to slap judging labels on qualities that threaten our shot at it.

It’s only later, through broader experiences, that I realized differences aren’t dangerous, they’re what makes us who we are. In accepting them in myself, I could love them in others.

It took a long time to come to terms with my heritage, my body, and the way I’m wired. And it’s still taking time. But having experienced Korean culture firsthand during time spent with my relatives in Seoul; after winning matches thanks to the power and speed of my legs; and after meaningful conversations that arose from asking too many questions, the things I disliked about myself are now the ones I celebrate these days. 

My whole life I’ve been told to pay attention.  I was told that I would never do well in school because I couldn’t stay focused. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I had ADD.

When I was four, I learned how to tie my shoe laces. About a week afterwards, I completely forgot how. I sat on the stairs of my childhood home, completely baffled with myself.

At the time, I never understood why I couldn’t remember; my parents just thought I was being a typical four-year-old who constantly forgot things.

Once I started school, things got worse.  I would come home from school and my mom would ask me how my day went and I would just reply with a simple, “Good.” The honest truth was that there were parts of my day I couldn’t even remember.

Me and my family.

This resulted in me almost failing kindergarten. Yes, kindergarten. The place where all you do is learn about shapes, basic words, and numbers.

My mom pleaded with my teacher to let me pass if I got my reading and math skills up.

Every night after school, I had to sit at the table with my mom and go through everything I learned at school that day.

This would take hours. We would sit at the kitchen table from when I got home to when I went to bed. The rules consisted of no playing with friends, watching TV, or playing sports until my reading and math levels went up.

I was so frustrated with myself that I couldn’t remember simple things. This routine continued on for about four years. My parents tried everything: from having me stay after school with teachers, to my grandma (who is a retired teacher) tutoring me, to even enrolling me in an after-school learning program. Even with all their efforts, none of it worked.

It wasn’t until the fourth grade that I was tested for a learning disability.

Come to find out I had something called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). This basically means that I struggle with focusing on one thing.

Think of it like focusing on five things at once, all day every day. Then when your brain says I’ve had enough, it “shuts down.”

From the outside, it appears like you are daydreaming, but on the inside, you are actually fighting to get out of this state of aimlessly staring at something irrelevant for a countless amount of time.

Me and my teammate after winning a volleyball competition.

After I was diagnosed, I was put in special education classes because I was behind in reading and math by two grades. I hated it.

They made me feel stupid, as if I wasn’t as smart as everyone else. From that point forward, I vowed to myself that I was going to do whatever it took to get out of these classes.

By the time I reached middle school, my reading and math levels were up to a sixth grade level. I believe this did not happen because I was in special education classes; this happened because of my determination to make myself better.

I worked hard every single day. When I got home, I sat in my room and re-taught myself everything we went over in class. Once I was caught up in school, my parents finally allowed me to pick a sport I wanted to play. I chose volleyball and absolutely loved it.

ADD had shown me at a young age what determination and a good work ethic look like. During middle school and high school, I got all As and Bs and never went back to a special education class.

In high school, I even took a couple honors courses. I never told my teachers about my disability; I always wanted to be treated like a normal student. I hate special treatment.

When my mom told my teachers about it at the end of the year, they were always dumbstruck because it never seemed like I had any issues with paying attention. Most of my friends didn’t even notice until I told them about it.

I kept it as my little secret because I never wanted anyone to treat me like I was stupid or slow because of it.

Having ADD is a part of who I am as a person.  It has taught me a lot about how strong and determined I am.

Not only did it help me excel in school, but it also helped me become a great volleyball player. Turns out, having ADD is great for volleyball, I can focus on five things at once and not be overwhelmed and still get the job done.

I blame ADD for making me a self-determined person. I would not be a D1 volleyball player at Georgia State University without it. It has shown me so much about my personal strength and how I can do anything I put my mind to.

God gave me ADD for a reason; He gave me this challenge because I was strong enough to overcome it. I no longer see my ADD as a disability. Instead, I see it as a gift.

Being captain on the leadership council for the gymnastics team has taught me that becoming a leader is downright one of the most important aspects of being successful. But what’s even more important than being a leader is being a good leader.

Seth Godin’s book, Tribes, gave me a lot of insight on the traits of a leader, especially in terms of comparing a leader to a boss. Since I was named a member of the leadership council for the Rutgers Gymnastics team, I connected to Tribes on a personal level.

Being a good leader is about opening yourself up and connecting with your tribe to reach a common goal.

As a captain I use my personal beliefs, as well as new ideas I have learned, to push my team towards our goals on a daily basis.

Gymnastics

One idea that I have always felt strongly about that was touched upon in Tribes was the idea of not doing something for glory, but instead because you genuinely want to help.

“Which is true of all great leaders…They’re generous. They exist to help the tribe find something, to enable the tribe to thrive. But they understand that the most powerful way to enable is to be statue-worthy.” – Seth Godin.

Leaders want nothing more than to achieve their goals with people they care about and respect. They are open to ideas from tribe members and go out of their way to connect with these people.

This is my passion and this is why I enjoy my role on the gymnastics team as a captain in the leadership council.

Making personal connections with my team forms trust and makes the team work as a whole.
A tribe won’t reach a goal without the support and dedication from each member. If trust is formed, team members are more likely to follow my lead and trust the process.

“He didn’t tell them what to do. He didn’t manage the effort; he led it.” – Seth Godin.

Leading by example to me means not only leading in the physical aspect of gymnastics, but also in the leading aspect in itself. A boss is most interested in results, and doesn’t specifically care about the learning process to achieve these results. In my opinion, the process is when character is built and knowledge is gained.

Personally, I try to fine tune the process and focus on the small details, because that’s when habits are formed and greatness is achieved. Bosses don’t necessarily care about forming connections with their employees. Forming connections with other members of my tribe is not only a genuine hobby of mine, but it is key for our success.

While reading Tribes I couldn’t help but relate it to being a captain on the leadership council for the gymnastics team. Good leaders are vital to a tribe if they want to reach, or even surpass their goals. Just like in the book, I make it a point to lead my team and tribe by example. Because of this, I form trustworthy bonds between my teammates and do what I love to do.

Challenges arise in everyone’s life. Knowing how to face them and how to learn from them separates those who overcome a challenge from those who do not.

I proudly swim for the University of Georgia, which happens to be one of the foremost dominant programs in the nation, winning two NCAA championships in the past three years. Being a student-athlete at UGA, I know that challenges are present every day, whether in the form of a practice that appears insurmountable or studying for a dreaded exam.

Facing certain challenges can cause stress and frustration, which I have recent experience in. This past December I underwent surgery on my right shoulder and nothing has been more frustrating than coping with the injury before surgery and with the recovery process that ensued. Despite the irritating frustration and incredible challenge, this experience has been the most rewarding in my life thus far.

I have always been involved in many sports, but I chose to continue with swimming in order to pursue a collegiate career.

Throughout the many sports that I’ve participated in, including track and tennis, I had only ever been injured once with stress fractures. That changed during the summer of 2014 over Fourth of July weekend. I rarely go to lakes or do things that could potentially harm my being an athlete, but that weekend I decided to have some fun and go to my friend’s lake house.

Though I only went inner-tubing twice over the three days of being there, that second time was enough to cause an injury. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I remember feeling a jerking within my shoulder when I tried to hang onto the inner-tube while the speedboat flung me into the air off a wave.

I didn’t fall off, but my shoulder sure wanted to.

The rest of the weekend I just “relaxed” on the boat while trying to shake off the dull throbbing pain in my shoulder. If you don’t know anything about the sport of swimming, just know that having any shoulder injury is very bad.

Swimmers complete miles in the pool every day with a constant repetitive rotation of our shoulders, which puts a lot of stress on the joint and surrounding muscles. Any injury, however minor, is a threat to a swimmer’s career.

After that weekend, I spent about a month modifying my training in order to tolerate practices. Unbeknownst to me, my bicep tried compensating for the lack of strength in my shoulder; so when I went to see a doctor, I was diagnosed with having bicep tendonitis, which was true, but not the main problem.

I had two weeks before I moved to Athens.

During those weeks I took time out of the pool solely to rehab my bicep tendon. By the time I arrived to UGA, the tendonitis was much better, but not gone. Furthermore, right when I started practicing with the team my shoulder immediately flared back up, and my tendon was still a bit inflamed. No amount of rehabilitation was able to improve my shoulder, so in early September I went in for an MRI.

Turns out I had distal clavicular osteolysis from separating my AC joint. The only logical response to this was to say that I did it on that inner-tube on July 4th. I knew that because the pain started from that day forward.

From the separation and osteolysis, I had bone spurs that took up the majority of my joint space, causing a bone-on-bone grinding action every time I moved my arm in the pool. This explained why my shoulder hurt every time I took a stroke at practice.

Knowing my true injury, I spent my entire first semester at UGA in limbo and in constant frustration, trying to avoid the inevitable decision to say yes to shoulder surgery.

With this injury, surgery was the only way it could be fixed. This fact frustrated me more than anything. Coming into UGA, I had the mindset of training harder than ever in order to improve in my sport and in my overall health. However, my shoulder inhibited me from doing that. I couldn’t give 100% because my shoulder wouldn’t allow it.

Since my shoulder restrained me, I was held back from competition throughout the fall. To me, nothing is more frustrating than being restricted. Seeing my team train and compete without me was defeating. As a temporary solution, I received a cortisone injection into my AC joint. After that didn’t help, I faced the inevitable and decided to schedule shoulder surgery, knowing my first season would be a flop.

Luckily, my coaches graciously allowed me to take a medical redshirt, which would save my first year of eligibility, giving me the opportunity to start anew as a freshman in the fall of 2015. Knowing this gave me some of my inner peace back while trying to cope with the recovery process. After having surgery in December 2014, I came to discover many things about myself and about my sport, which I would have only known through this injury.

Swimming is not my life. Though many athletes come to college just for their sport, we are first and foremost students.

One’s sport should be a stepping-stone into learning and preparing for later things in life. Being an athlete requires one to overcome difficult practices, recover from a failure, manage success with humility, and understand time management. I’ve always had good time management, but with my injury I had more free time than ever, and I realized how easily I could take my free time for granted.

Instead of using time to study, it could casually be thrown away by watching TV, partying, or just simply procrastinating. I wasted some of this time by doing those things, discovering later that the new extra time that I had was an opportunity to improve.

Having this extra time, I dedicated much of it to my studies and improved my grades as the semester went on. My injury, therefore, taught me how to manage my time more efficiently and delegate more of it to studying.

I realized what my actual goals were in life (at least for now). Being injured is awful, but it made me realize how badly I wanted to improve as an athlete. From December to March, I couldn’t swim. Before my injury, the longest time I had been out of the water from training was two weeks, so this lapse in my training was extremely tough to adjust to.

Each day I did cardio in the gym that overlooks the pool that my team practices in. Seeing my team practice every day was frustrating because I was not with them, but seeing them practice made me want to do everything in my power to get my shoulder healthy and get back in the pool as quickly as possible.

Not being able to swim gave me the hunger I needed to drive my passion to improve.

This passion didn’t only apply to the pool however—my desire to improve carried over into my academics and future goals as well. I had a lot of time to think while doing cardio every day, and my thoughts turned into the goals, both long-term and short-term, that I am striving to reach.

Most important to me, I realized the importance of adjusting to and overcoming adversity. I have faced many failures, as well as successes, throughout the sport of swimming. Even when I thought a certain failure was the end of the world, it wasn’t.

From having numerous conversations with my family, my dad in particular, and my coach, I learned that what matters most is how one addresses the failure or setback and works to overcome and learn from it.

Recovering from surgery has not been easy, but all of the challenges that I’ve faced along the way this past half year have been worthwhile and eye opening. Though the first couple of days after my surgery were painful and it seemed that it would take a lifetime to recover, here I am six months later about to compete for the first time in almost eight months.

No matter how daunting a challenge or task may seem, there is always a way to complete and overcome it—it just takes patience and determination.

My injury, and the long recovery process, changed the way I think about my college experience, my goals, and most importantly, myself. Though it was extremely frustrating and taxing, the experience has been a blessing in disguise.

Now, I am willing to work harder than before because I know what I want to accomplish in my collegiate career as an athlete and in my lifetime. Every challenge has its obstacles and doubts, but I now look past those and seek the positives within each test, because I know that I have the strength and determination to overcome any challenge and trial that I put my mind to.

I was a boxer in the United States Army who fought welterweight. I’ve never been a quitter, but one fight made me prove myself more than any other. I had won my first three fights in the sub-novice division. I graduated to the open class. That’s when my troubles began. No one told me I was going to fight the man who had just been named all army champ.

We fought three, three minutes rounds. The gloves and the trunks sported the company logo, Everlast. We fought with 8 oz. gloves with no tape on our knuckles, only over our wrists – a far cry from today’s fighters. They wear headgear that looks like space helmets and they fight with bigger gloves.

From round one his ruby-red gloves pounded out a merciless beat against my head. I wasn’t marching to a different drummer – I was the drum. A cut opened over my left eye.

A Rorschach test pattern of rich, red blood splattered on my silver and black trunks. The bell rang. End of round one.

I went back to my corner. My trainer poured water over my head and put a Q-Tip with some coagulant on it and held it against my cut. I still wear the scar to this very day. Then he smeared Vaseline over my cut and face. I was told to stay away and jab.

The bell rang for round two. It was more of the same. I guess the ref could have stopped the fight, but it was only round two. He asked me if I had had enough. I shook my head no. I had some will left. The bell rang to end round two. I slowly walked back to my corner bleeding from the nose. My eye cut was reopened.

“Son, you gotta throw more punches,” my trainer said. “I think I want this fight more than you do. Want me to throw in the towel?”
“No way,” I said. The ref came to the corner.
“Want to continue?”
“Yes,” I said. “I got to last out the three rounds. It’s a matter of pride.”

The bell rings for round three, the final round. We walk to the center of the ring and touch gloves.

He continues his assault on my face and body. It would be so easy to quit, to take a knee, and make this nightmare end.

But then I think to myself, this isn’t just a fight between two men. This is a fight for who I am and what I stand for. To quit, I’d be quitting on myself. This was my self-esteem on the line. I had to last for three more minutes.

I duck my head and charge into my tormentor like a raging bull. He throws an uppercut that hits my chest so hard it makes it feel like my heart stopped. Head still down, trying to salvage some desperate glory, I see an elastic band on his pristine trucks.

In a small rectangle I read the black logo letters of the company name, Everlast. I will last. The bell mercifully rings. Of course he wins by a decision. But he couldn’t get me off of my feet – a moral victory and a win for me.

I faced a superior force and remained standing. Ironically, it was my opponent that showed me the sign, a shibboleth that gave me the courage to never quit.

Perhaps knowledge can sometimes be born from pain. Today that all seems like a lifetime ago, but even now when things are looking rough and the world’s beating up on me I ask myself: “How can I ever last?” I think, for only a split second, how easy it would be to take a knee, lie down, and quit.

Then I recall another dark and testing moment from my past. And I thank my adversary for the valuable lesson losing taught me – how to win. Slowly I say the word to myself, Everlast. Now aloud I sing out my battle cry, EVERLAST.

Suddenly, anything and everything standing in front of me, while yet formidable, somehow seems a little more manageable. And I charge once again, like a raging bull, straight ahead into my tormentor, knowing I’ll never quit.

I believe time is something most of us take for granted. In the literal sense, time is something that we can never get back, yet most people don’t seem to realize that until they lose something of value. I’m not saying be anxious all the time and worry about what you’re doing every second of the day but just ask yourself, are you making the most out of your time today?

Every day at 5 A.M, my alarm goes off. Half asleep, I force myself out of bed into the bathroom to start preparing for the day ahead. What’s my first task of the day? Well, it’s to go and workout and perfect my craft. For those who may be wondering, my craft is football. It’s a sport I fell in love with fairly late in my life, since I only started playing in high school.

Always knew I’d want to play sports professionally when I grew up, but couldn’t decide which sport until I found football.

My story is no different than most athletes, I was just a small town kid with big dreams to play at a big Division 1 school then eventually go to the pros. Funny when I look back, I had my entire life planned out up until I made it to the league. Needless to say, things have not gone according to plan. I’m a junior in college, and at this point of my life I was supposed to have declared early for the draft and be on my way to the NFL. Yet it’s my junior year and I have not even been able to play a single down of college football.

I’ve always felt in life that you could achieve anything you wanted in life as long as you put the work in. No matter what it was, if I worked hard enough, I knew I would be able to achieve any goal. The path to playing college ball has been a tough one for me. I have faced my fair share of obstacles. I had to come to Rutgers University and walk on to the team. I tried out and made the team no problem, but yet was not able to play.

Next semester comes, then my grades stop me from playing.

I get my priorities straight and try out again. Once again I make the team, and I was just a couple days away from getting my jersey until it was discovered I would need surgery on my shoulder because of a previous injury years ago in high school. The obstacles drained me almost completely. I barely even worked out at this point. My surgery was the turning point in my life.

The Stockdale Paradox: a concept introduced in the Jim Collins book Good to Great, explains that you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

In a study done by the International Committee for the Study of Victimization, they looked at people who had suffered serious adversity. The results of the study showed that people generally fell into three groups. Those who let the adversity keep them down, those who get their lives back to normal, and those who take that adversity and grow stronger.

I’m in that third group.

The brutal facts of my situation? Well the biggest one is time. I have two years remaining to play college football. The surgery sparked something in me, and helped me realize that the journey will be hard, but I’m completely capable of doing it.

I have to work every day, and I have to work harder than everybody else to achieve my goal. Just like the good-to-great companies, I understand the brutal facts, and I will not hesitate to face them.

Baseball. Cheering. Crack of the Bat. If you’re at Turner Field, the Tomahawk Chop. Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, my summers included hanging out at the pool, country concerts, going to as many Braves games as possible, and tailgating in the infamous blue lot.

Goal-Setting

I was always fascinated by the game of baseball and all the behind the scenes work that went into putting on the game—from an operations standpoint to connecting all the pieces for things to run as they should.

Like many boys growing up, I wanted to be a professional ball player in the “show”, playing a game that I love for a living. After coming to grips with my mediocre baseball skills, I sought the next best thing: working for an MLB team and doing any and everything it would take to land a job in professional baseball. I wanted to be around the game and involved with the sport everyday, ultimately deciding to major in sport management at the University of Georgia to help me achieve that dream.

Failing…

I applied in March of 2015 for the Braves Ticket Event Team (TET), a group of about 30 college students that work at the home games and assist with raffle and special group outings. I thought this would be the perfect way to get my foot in the door with the Braves and make a name for myself within the organization.

While I had prior experience assisting my school’s athletic department and doing volunteer work with different sport organizations, I was not selected for the job with the Ticket Event Team. It would have been a great opportunity to start my career with the Braves, but that wasn’t in the cards.

After a couple of months, the summer slowly started to creep around the corner. I had no idea what I was going to do to get more experience in the sports industry. I know I wanted to get involved with something, but my options seemed limited with UGA’s Athletic Department slowing down for the season.

Turning the Tide

One morning in April, I woke up to a Facebook message from Bryan Wish, the founder of this platform, whom I had met several times before through Josh Jones, a mutual friend. Bryan told me about an opportunity to become involved with the Atlanta Braves as a college sales ambassador. He was putting together a group of students to reach out to Georgia colleges and universities, getting student and Greek organizations to come out to games this season. I immediately told him I was interested and thought, “Here is my shot to make a name for myself with the Braves!”

The Results of My Efforts (see the fine print)

I messaged and emailed everyone I could think of from UGA to have them come out to a game, but I didn’t receive the response I wanted.

I thought to myself that if I really wanted to make a name for myself, I needed to set myself apart from everyone else. I began reaching out to schools all over the state as well as schools in Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina.

I spent countless hours that summer on my computer sending hundreds of emails and messages and trying to take full advantage of the great opportunity I had been given.

It almost became an addiction in the fact that I would keep finding new leads and would pursue any organization I could think of that may be interested.

I finally broke into schools like Georgia Southern, Auburn, Valdosta State, South Carolina, Tennessee, Clemson, and many others.  Through the course of the season, I sold 2,436 tickets, $24,000+ in ticket sales, and created successful sales at 12 different colleges. Now that the season has closed, I am proud to say that I have led all the college ambassadors in sales as well as overall tickets sold. On top of all that, I’m applying for a position with the Braves in the next few weeks.

The 9th Inning

When I was turned down from the Ticket Event Team before the season started, I was really bummed because I knew that could be my chance to make a name for myself. When Bryan came to me with the opportunity to get involved however, I needed to “knock it out of the park” to make people with the Braves recognize my work ethic and notice me for a position after school.

My advice to anyone who wants to work in sports is to find your passion—whether that’s college sports, sales, marketing, public relations, or community outreach—and pursue it relentlessly until an opportunity comes your way. When it does, take full advantage, set yourself apart, and something good will come of it.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”  – Steve Jobs

As a gymnast, flipping through the air on a four inch beam requires the highest level of concentration and balance. I have spent over 15 years of my life practicing balance beam, and at times, I still lose my balance.

In life, just like gymnastics, balance is one of the hardest skills to achieve and also one of the most important. I believe it is a lifelong, learning process that requires self-discipline and adaptability. Achieving success as a student-athlete in the classroom and in competition is absolutely impossible without it; and I have learned this lesson the hard way.

My life as a high-school student and club gymnast consisted of two things: school and gymnastics. School was never too much of a challenge for me.

I stayed on top of my school work, managed to get A’s and B’s, and focused the majority of my time and effort on my passion…gymnastics.

My hard work in the gym paid off, and I was given the opportunity to compete at the collegiate level on full athletic scholarship. Something I will forever be grateful for.

I had two realizations after my first semester of college: school is hard; and I love being social.

However, college presented itself with a whole new set of challenges. I had two realizations after my first semester of college: school is hard; and I love being social. Because I spent the majority of my life prior to college in the gym, my social life was nonexistent, other than my teammates who were more like sisters to me; but I was completely fine with that.

My drive and determination to excel in gymnastics and compete for the best college in the country (UGA) trumped any desire to have a social life.

June, 2013, I moved into the dorms at UGA. I was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of people that shared the same love of sport that I have. We all spent our entire existence dedicated to our sport, something that few people understand.

I made so many friends freshman year. Often times, I would sacrifice studying for hanging out with friends. It wasn’t long before my GPA began to suffer. I knew I had to make a change.

Instead of limiting the amount of time I spent socializing, I began to sacrifice sleep; and believe me when I tell you, I need sleep! I quickly realized that playing egg toss in the hallways until 1 a.m. with the swimmers that lived next door, or teaching the baseball players how to do flips on the couch (luckily there were no serious injuries) was not the wisest use of my time. My lack of sleep was beginning to affect my concentration in the classroom and in the gym.

My body couldn’t keep up. I was tired, overwhelmed, and stressed. I was off balance.

Sophomore came with nagging injury, maybe resulting from a lack of focus, that added to my stress and frustration. I wanted to be healthy, I wanted to compete, I wanted to reach my full potential in the sport I love, and in the classroom. I needed BALANCE.

I knew my struggles in the gym and school were God’s way of telling me, “you have to make a change.”

I needed to prioritize.

I needed to invest my time into relationships that would last a lifetime rather than sacrificing my studies or sleep for friends that are there for me only when it’s convenient for them. I knew this transition wouldn’t happen overnight.

It was going to take me exerting self-discipline in consistently making good decisions that would put me in a position to reach my full potential in all areas of life. I knew it would be tough, but God creates His toughest soldiers through life’s hardest battles.

The end of my sophomore season as a gym dog was steadily approaching, and things were finally beginning to look up. My ankles were almost at 100% and my GPA was on the rise.

I continued to strive to make good decisions with my time. Taking on a support role for the beginning of the season was new to me, but it taught me to be encouraging, patient, and hungry for the spotlight again. I sought out every opportunity to prove myself in the gym.

I would say a prayer every time, “God, pleeeease let her call my name. I want to compete soooo bad.” But every time I heard, “…and Morgan will be the alternate.”

The last few meets of the regular season were upon us. When Coach Danna Durante began to call out the lineups for the upcoming meet, everyone was silent. I would say a prayer every time, “God, pleeeease let her call my name. I want to compete soooo bad.” But every time I heard, “…and Morgan will be the alternate.” I had to take this as a challenge. A challenge to work even harder in the gym; to continue to push my teammates and prove that I was ready to compete.

The last meet of the season was at home vs Utah. Danna called out the lineups; but this time, I was not an alternate. I was competing second on beam and first on floor! I was excited and ready.

That night, I competed with a new appreciation for the opportunity to compete as a gym dog.

I hit had a solid beam routine, followed by a memorable floor routine to tie my career high score of 9.9. I secured my spot in both lineups going into post season. My team and I went on to win Regionals, and then later placed 9th at the NCAA Championships.

Halfway through my college career, and I continue to strive for balance in all areas of my life. It is a lifelong process. With different stages in life, come different things to balance. Prioritize what’s important, rely on God to take care of things out of our control, and live a peaceful, balanced life full of happiness rather than stress and anxiety.

When I graduated high school, I was voted ‘Most Likely to go to the Olympics.’ Well, I’m going. But not in the way I always dreamed.

To be honest, I don’t actually know how old I was when I did my first triathlon (a race comprised of swimming, biking and running). If I had to take a guess, it would probably be six or seven years old. And no, I didn’t instantly fall in love or excel at the sport. I tried just about every sport you could think of before I went back to triathlon.

My first triathlon of significance was when I was in eighth grade. After having a bout of thinking I was destined to be the female Steve Prefontaine and another bout of thinking my big break in swimming was just around the corner, I decided to really TRY triathlon. Both my mom and my dad competed in Ironmans, along with being exceptional athletes throughout their lifetimes.

Sports was something I grew up around and something that I craved to excel at. But I just didn’t. Until I decided to try.

Throughout high school, I balanced club swimming, running and triathlon. The seasons of life followed the seasons of high school sports. Fall meant cross country, winter meant swimming, spring meant track and for me, summer meant triathlon. All the while, I did my best to maintain training in all three sports. And it worked. I actually began to excel at being a swimmer, a runner and most of all, a triathlete.

By the time the beginning of my senior year rolled around, there was no looking back. I was enamored by triathlon and knew I could succeed if I just dedicated all of my energy to being a triathlete. This meant giving up school dances, weekends with friends, laying out at the pool and so many other typical high school activities, but I did it without thinking twice. Heck, on the day of my senior prom I ran a track race in the morning, went and took pictures, ditched my date, went back to the track to run another race, then rode to prom with my mom. Yeah, that was my life.

In school, I went from being the girl who did triathlons to being the girl who was really good at triathlons. I went to every local race expecting to win and being disappointed if I didn’t. On the junior elite circuit, I put up consistent top-10 finishes in the 2013 season. I was even invited to the US Olympic Training Center for a short training camp.

Granted, times have changed drastically for the sport, but back then- I thought that was pretty good.

Then came college. College was supposed to be a place where I would push myself even further in triathlon; where I would truly become the best of the best. But that’s not what happened. Caring about your academic success and training at an elite level without the support of your university’s athletic association simply do not go hand in hand. University athletes have tutors, trainers, doctors, anything you can imagine, right at their disposal. I had nothing but my will to succeed.

After having a terrible first race of the 2104 season, I decided it was time for a ‘traincation.’ During my freshman year spring break, I drove down to Clermont, Florida to train with my coach and do absolutely nothing else. By the end of the week, I was experiencing some tightness and soreness in my back and decided to wrap up a day early to go home and relax. And that’s when my life changed.

A couple days after returning to school from traincation and a week before my departure to Arizona for collegiate nationals, I woke up and wasn’t able to stand up straight. Imagine a wet branch in the woods. You know how you try and break it, but since it isn’t fully dry wood, some strands still hang on at a weird 45 degree angle? Well, that was my back. My legs and hips were just fine, but a sharp pain in my lower back caused me not to be able to stand up straight. This pain escalated so much through the following days, that even rolling over in bed became excruciatingly painful.

Two herniated discs is what the MRI revealed.

I began treatment with a local chiropractor, but as the school year wrapped up, I had no choice but to leave Athens. I was nowhere near complete with treatments, so I spent the entire summer of 2014 driving back and forth between home and Athens, a four hour round trip.

By the end of summer, I finally thought that I was healed. I thought that my back was ready to get back into the same shape it once was. I quickly learned that that was far from the case. As the weeks went on and I tried to get back into the swing of training, it quickly became clear that my clock had run out.

Having something that once meant everything to you ripped out from under feet is one of the hardest things in the world to cope with. And that’s because I placed my identity in my success as an athlete. What was I if I wasn’t the girl who was really good at triathlons?

To this day, I still suffer anxiety from not being able to train. I have severe guilt when a day passes that I don’t exercise- whether it be by choice or fault of my back. When I do run, I feel depression because I am not as fast as I used to be. I struggle with the fact that new people I meet don’t know this cool fact about me and that my body has changed significantly.

Despite all the bad, there is one good thing that came out of my situation.

I learned that there is a story to tell. Every athlete is made of something different and every athlete has a unique path that led them to where they are today. And those stories deserve to be not only told, but also celebrated.

I have the unique opportunity to tell athlete’s stories through my job and my degree. I would not have found the affinity to share their stories had it not been for my back. And now I get to tell athlete’s stories on the biggest stage in sport: The Olympics.

I’ll spend nearly the entirety of August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with the U.S. Olympic Committee communications staff reporting what is happening regarding all things Team USA at the games. I may not be competing in the Olympics like athlete me always dreamt of, but now I get to support others as they pursue their dreams. And that’s what the new me dreams of.