Sports training usually starts at a young age. Sports like wrestling, basketball, or football, for example, can start at six to nine years old. But some student athletes don’t join their sports until their freshman or sophomore year, which can pose a challenge, being around others who are far more experienced in their sport.
“Everybody in wrestling has been doing this since they were toddlers, and I joined it late compared to everyone else,” said junior wrestler Esteban Cervantes. “I think everybody there makes me feel welcome, and tries to teach me everything they can [to] pass on their knowledge [and] all the skills,” Cervantes said.
Cervantes isn’t the only wrestler who joined the sport later than some of the other players. Another wrestler, Sophomore Lola Gilder, shares her experiences joining late to both Wrestling and Soccer.
“I started wrestling this season. [It’s] the first time [I’ve] done it. For soccer, I played it for a long time when I was a really little kid, and then I stopped for a while, then joined [again] for my sophomore year,” stated Gilder. “It’s a big jump, being an absolute beginner to playing with people who have been doing it for their whole lives,” Gilder said. “It definitely can feel pretty disheartening at first, but I just have to remember that I started a lot later, and there’s [still] a lot that I can learn from them.”
Like Gilder, Junior Santino Mlady also started football in his sophomore year, with very little background knowledge of the sport.
“[I started football my] sophomore year,” Mlady said, “When I first started, I felt like everybody had the set things that they already did. After a little bit, I definitely got more accepted into football,” Mlady stated.
“[There was a gap in] skill level, or just understanding [of] how the game works, because I never played any sports growing up,” Mlady said. “Everybody understood the plays, what was going on, and the coaches didn’t explain the play[s] too well, so a lot of my friends had to explain that stuff to me,” Mlady said.
Research from ResearchGate states that most professional athletes start sports at 5 to 13 years of age, basketball at five to nine, football at three to nine, wrestling at nine to fifteen, gymnastics at four to eight, hockey at five to ten, and volleyball at seven to ten.
These students started at around fourteen to sixteen, above the average age, which they state was difficult, but they gradually got better. Sports with a lot more technicality and experience needed to play definitely have a much larger learning curve, such as Football, Basketball, and hockey.
“Me and my defensive lineman friends do a lot of field work outside of football, and that has helped so much. And a lot of the time, because I don’t know everything about football, they’ll take their own time to explain everything to me,” said Mlady. “I would say, my sophomore year, it was strict just learning the game and just trying to understand what was happening, because I never played any sports growing up. And then everybody was like, ‘Hey, you should play football because I got bigger.’ I just started gaining muscle weight, and I’m really susceptible to peer pressure, so I was like, ‘okay, sure, I’ll do that.’” Mlady said
“Before I got into football, I didn’t even know there were plays. I thought it was just guys [running] into each other. But turns out football is really strategic. Coaches were [saying] stuff like sharp left or right. I was like, ‘What is this whole new language that I had zero clue about?’”
