Owen Kitts '21 Recruiting Profile

My Mimi , or better known as my hero, held on to her painful cancer diagnosis to see me turn 16 years old. We were very close. In fact, she was one of my favorite people on earth. She was always so fun, energetic and funny. Even when she became so thin, weak and tired, she never lost that special love we shared. The few baseball games she too weak to attend, she would insist on watching my brother and I on game changer. In the ER, while getting chemo infusions or just laying in her bed, she was so proud of my brother and I. Watching my mom care for her so gently, was moving. It was almost as if she had become a baby again. I am certain that my Mimi never thought she would see the day that her own daughter would be performing personal hygiene for her. She passed away on Christmas Day, 2018 while my mom and I slept with her. It was oddly peaceful. There was a calming sense that she wasn’t in pain anymore. I miss her so much. However, throughout her illness, I realized something that I will carry with me forever. The lesson is that you will never get time back. She moved up from Florida for treatments here In PA and I have no doubt that we were able to give her an amazing last year. But I often wonder if she wasn’t sick, would we have taken that time?

That being said, it carries me to college and certainly through baseball with many important lessons.

By commitment and dedication, as an athlete, I possess the ability to stay motivated and I posses the passion to achieve anything I set out to accomplish in my life. While winning is important, it is also important to make high personal goals and team goals, it is important to still have fun. It is also very important to take the time to know you don’t get it back.

Athletics has taught me Interpersonal relations, communication, empathy, and humility. That’s what athletes are groomed for. As a teammate and leader, it’s important that I recognize what makes each of my teammates tick, how can I motivate them, and what kinds of support they need that I may be able to provide.

Simultaneously, this is a constant self reminder of how to receive, interpret, filter, and apply different forms of feedback both from a variety of sources.

While the ability to make time for regular stress-relieving activities (whether that be exercise or otherwise) is certainly not the only way to maintain mental health in the face of a demanding workload, as an athlete, we are accustomed to doing so, and may have an easier time building that time into our schedule. In summary, I believe you must do everything you can to the very best of your ability. Do not accept mediocre. I’ve learned that Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.