Sports are a very special part of my life and something I couldn’t imagine living without. My favorite thing after having a long, stressful day at school is coming home, changing into my practice gear and heading straight for practice. One of the many reasons I play soccer is to de-stress from a very academic environment and simply focus on the game. Despite soccer being quite competitive in its nature, I have played nearly my entire life and find great joy within it.
At the beginning of August, I went to IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida for soccer camp to prepare me for Fieldston preseason. IMG is a unique place in that whatever sport people play there, everyone practicing has the same passion and dedication. It is very intense and each sport has multiple practices per day. Each day the schedule is practically the same. Everyone wakes up, eats breakfast, goes to practice, goes to the weight room, eats lunch, goes to another practice, eats dinner, goes to sleep, and does the same thing the next day.
At IMG, I met a wide range of people with diverse backgrounds. People come from all over the world in order to improve their game, which creates a bond and a special community. During my time at IMG, I met people from five different countries: Ireland, Mexico, Peru, Japan and Canada. It was fascinating to realize that the dedication and love for soccer that means so much to me is shared by people who come from all across the world. For one week in this enclosed space, the world felt much smaller. In addition, I was able to bond with the people I met in my dorm over the same shared interest. Each person I met at IMG was there for the same reason: to improve as a soccer player, which I don’t encounter often.
IMG Academy has an elite athlete mentality which pushes players to work their hardest. There has been increased focus in recent years on the mindset and psychology of top athletes. Pro sports teams have increasingly hired staff to help players improve their mind game. The coaches at IMG hold a certain standard for their athletes that forces them to put in the maximum effort in order to get the outcomes the team wants. This mentality is also shared by athletes. Each player wants to work their hardest and push themselves to succeed. This is the type of mindset I hope to bring back into the Fieldston soccer team as well as my club team out of school. It demands each individual athlete to hold themselves to a standard to succeed. Each athlete needs to push themselves as hard as they can in order to lead the team to success.
This camp was a special experience for me. In the past few years, I have had many coaches who weren’t with my team for very long. Because I had inconsistent coaching, my coaches wouldn’t hold us to as high of a standard as I encountered at IMG. I felt that I didn’t have the elite athlete mentality and didn’t push myself as hard as I knew I could because of this. This is something that I felt set me back because I didn’t improve as much as I could have, had my mindset been pushed and developed through consistent coaching. Going to IMG showed that I am able to compete against higher competition and I am able to push myself to work my hardest for my team.
