Embarking on a professional sports career : Is it really worth the effort?

Sports. A huge part of my life has quite frankly been based around it to be honest. From a very young age I've always dreamt about making it to the elite level of any sport that I watched on TV whether it be football, tennis or badminton for example. There was constantly this source of motivation and eagerness to become the next Lionel Messi or Roger Federer whenever I got the opportunity to see them live in action.

Well...I guess my mind was too childish to think in that way back then. I mean that's because I didn't actually recognise the amount of hard work and dedication it took for them to get to where they are today. Witnessing their incredible qualities and natural talent effortlessly expressed for the world to see had obviously given me belief that sports was a pretty easy way to earn TONS of money.

So I spent the majority of my childhood practicing and harnessing my skills, determined as ever to one day emulate or even surpass my sporting idols and take my place at the very top of the world. Thankfully enough I was born into a family with a keen interest in sports, with my dad being especially crucial as he regularly took me to the tennis courts and football pitch around my housing area. It was here where I slowly developed my ball sense and realised that I had some serious potential.

Fast forward to 2017 when I just turned thirteen, I decided to take things more seriously after going for once-a-week trainings as I prioritised my studies over anything else at that point in time. My dad also felt it was time for me to make a step up so I joined a tennis academy in KL and began to train for like three times a week with occasional tournaments here and there as well. It was just sort of...I think you could say the perfect timing as I just completed my finals and it felt like a major boost for me in terms of my sporting aspirations.

Unfortunately this led to the beginning of the end for my dream...in a way. As soon as I started the first session I realised just how more technically skilled their strokes were in comparison to mine. I barely had enough stamina to last through half an hour of training let alone go toe-to-toe against them in a best of three sets match. By the end of my first three hour long tennis training I had already suffered from ankle pain while my hand was as tired as ever from having to play two tiebreakers which I lost badly...obviously.

The following weeks that came drowned my confidence level with each training session that passed. Even worse, I was getting first-round knockouts just in small tournaments and by the time it came to the team tournament where academies competed against one another, I picked up a miserable record of only two wins out of about six matches that I played altogether.

Those tough times at the end of 2017 carried on to the next year where even though I gradually started to improve, it seemed like I just wasn't good enough when it came to the national tournaments. My grades were floundering to my family and friends' surprise as well due to the fact that I had been very consistent before in each of my exams. So I decided to persevere until around June until I decided to call it quits.

Since then it's been almost a year and a half since I left the academy and all I can conclude is that sports, like everything else isn't a bed of roses. I knew what was right for me and admitted that I just wasn't good enough and chose my studies ultimately instead. That being said I'm not entirely discouraging anyone from pursuing a career in professional sports and if you think you're good enough then go ahead with it because well... it's your dream.

However, it's still worth remembering that you have to work extremely hard if you want to have success in anything that you do. Anyway thanks everyone for reading and I'll see you(hopefully) in another post.