How can I make my sports involvement more interesting?

Many students I have worked with have been involved in sports in high school and want to talk about it in their college admissions essays. Yet, when they start writing, they can barely remember a particular win or game, and most of their experience was practices and cameraderie with their teammates. How can you turn these common experiences into a compelling essay?

Begin Your Sports Essay

Start by thinking about why you played that particular sport. Did you like it? Perhaps you just started playing it as a kid and found it fun, or you had a special skill to contribute. Start exploring the topic by creating single sentences about your involvement in the sport. Here are some examples for someone who played soccer.

Start Outlining Your "Why"

1. I played goalie for my high school soccer team.

2. I have been playing soccer for 10 years since I was eight years old.

3. I started playing soccer because my mom wanted me to get some exercise.

4. My first team was the Blueberries.

5. I wasn't very good at first because when the season started I had sprained my wrist and the coach let me do drills but never really put me in the game.

6. Becuase I was sidelined for most of my first season, when I finally got to play after my wrist healed, I was determined to be the best and spent every afternoon kicking the ball against the fence and practicing my drills. This was when I started to feel good about myself as a soccer player.

7. When I was in middle school I didn't play in seventh grade because I didn't know if I liked it.

8. I started playing again in eighth grade because the soccer team would get out early sometimes.

9. In high school, I tried out for the soccer team freshman year. Most of the other girls were better than me. 

10. After tryouts I felt foolish because my skills weren't as good.

11. I went home and cried. I wasn't going to go back, but something inside me didn't want to quit. I remembered the passion I had when I was a kid after my wrist sprain, and how I caught up to the other kids' skills by practicing every day.

12. I went back the next day to tryouts and made the team. The coach said that I played much better the second day and that with practice, I could be great. She said she saw determination in my eyes, and that is the quality needed to play well. 

13. If I hadn't gone back the second day, I may never have had the chance to play in high school and form the friendships I had for the next four years.

Pull It Together

The 13 sentences above are already the start of a compelling essay. The exercise of writing sentences helped uncover what was unique about his player. Her early experience being sidelined as a child forced her to find self-determination, a quality that ultimately brought her success in her sport, and likely will bring her success in college, too.

Don't be afraid to start writing. Many students have sports experiences. Write sentences about yours until you uncover something unique. That's your hook!

Once you find the hook, you know what story you will tell about your sport that will make it unique.