- November 2019
Personal Statement
My experiences with moving, my knee injury and playing on a German travel team have given me the tools I need to be successful in softball and in life. When I was thirteen, I moved across the world to Japan. I had not even been outside of the country. Then I moved to Germany when I was fifteen years old. This year I moved to a new school in Germany and had to make new friends again. I struggled with making new friends and it pushed me into being introverted. I had to learn to break out of my shell and force myself to talk to people. I’ve met some of my closest friends by talking to them first. I tore my ACL my freshman year during the softball championship and had to have surgery soon after. I had to learn to push myself physically and mentally to get my knee better to play for the next season. My junior year I had to have another surgery on my knee because my knee hadn’t fully healed. I had to push myself physically and mentally again to be able to play my junior year. Also, playing club in a foreign country definitely added its own challenges. It was difficult to find a team at first. I had to learn to play through a language barrier and work with the differences of playing in a different country and with people from a different country. Through moving twice and going to two different middle schools and three different high schools, bouncing back from serious knee surgery and playing softball in a foreign country, I’ve learned how to communicate and advocate for myself, to persevere through challenges and how to communicate and adapt to my situation.
I first became interested in softball when I was around 9 years old. I decided to try softball because my dad and his brothers used to play baseball and I had not had any luck with any other sport at the time. My life experiences have made me mentally and physically stronger which have helped me in my softball career. My freshman year, I started every game at first base. My sophomore year brought new challenges. I had to step up and learn to pitch for my team when they needed me. I’ve had to persevere while pitching and move on from mistakes and continue going even when I was pitching my worst game. I’ve gotten mentally stronger through the years dealing with this. I also learned teamwork my sophomore year when my team won the DODEA European Championship for our school for the first time in its history. I learned leadership my junior year when I became captain and I had to learn to talk more and push myself out of my shell even more to be able to lead the other girls. In high school this year, I hope to pass all three of my AP exams and bring my GPA higher. I hope to get my masters or doctorate degree in Sports Psychology.
