I believe in persistence. I believe in producing blood, sweat, and tears when trying to accomplish something. To quote Robin Sharma, “ Persistence gets you farther than brilliance.” Persistence in this world has no substitute.

I am currently in the process of trying to get colleges to recruit me for soccer and academics. I am in 9th grade and I am starting early so I can have a leg up on everyone else, so while they are running around frantic I will be calm, cool, and collected. This past August my dad got me started on this website called Next College Student Athlete (NCSA.) The website is for kids who want to pursue a sport in college but need help with the whole recruiting process.

As I want to play college soccer I got my recruiting coach Lindsey to give me the steps, she is supposed to stay with me until I get a college to accept me. Above all that Lindsey gives tasks after our session calls. One of my tasks was to perfect a letter and send it out to a college. As I completed the letter and sent it out to my first college West Point, I quickly learned the NCAA rules and found out they can’t respond to me because I'm only the class of 2021, and also since I am so young they probably won’t respond to me. When Lindsey told me about this I was frustrated because I spent a good 2 hours on writing and perfecting the letter only to be told that they can respond because the are Division 1. Then Lindsey proceeded to say if you add your coaches email then they are allowed to talk to him about their thoughts. After this I talked to my dad about what to do and he said well know that we know all that we will keep on trying and send more letters to different colleges.

A few weeks go by and I have already sent a dozen letter to colleges ranging from Division 1-3, and the only replies I got were from Division 3 schools and they were the generic response of what their school is all about, their soccer record, and asked to keep them updated on upcoming tournaments I would be in.

This was a step up from not getting responses at all but nothing really personal which I was looking for. Then around 2 weeks later after I attended my first soccer ID camp at Holy Cross they emailed my coach and told them they liked what they saw and they would definitely love to look at when my next tournaments are. When I read this I got so happy and realized that my handwork is starting to show results. My persistence in emailing colleges was actually working. Then after this other colleges started getting back to my coach like Cornell and saying they would love to see more of my ability on the soccer field.

Persistence means continuing to work toward a goal even when it takes a long time or things get tough. Without persistence, obstacles can stop us; with persistence we learn from our failures, we work with them and build upon them.