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Josh's Story

Josh shares his dedication and identity to football at college and wanting to succeed in his athletic career, only to realize that it was taking him away from his academics. When Covid hit, which was brought with a year spent at home, he decided to change his focus from football towards his studies on Public Health. Leaving your past self may be hard, but it’s the sacrifice to limitless possibilities and realizing .

Josh's Story
00:00 / 03:20

So at 18 I think, not that my head was in the wrong place but, now looking back I was definitely a little bit naive, I think. I was really obviously into football. I'd like that's where I kind of put all my time and energy. I was fortunate enough where I won a state championship with my team in my senior year so that kind of boosted not my ego but my like attention towards football and wanting to keep on having success in the sport. So I obviously ended up going to Springfield College right after graduation to go play football at the college you know after being there for a couple of months and just kind of interacting with the people there. I just kind of realized that like I wasn't really getting as much out of it then that I thought I was going to and I was like you know what I'd rather just commit the time that I was spending playing football just to focus purely on my academics at that point. So I decided that I was going to quit football which was kind of a big part of my identity at the time. I kind of had to learn how to you know take that part of myself and kind of let it be in the past. I would say fortunately but unfortunately enough by the time I realize that I was done playing football Covid became a thing and that was during the Spring of my freshman year so we all got sent home and that was kind of like the you know the nail in the coffin for my decision if there's any time to you know hang up the cleats now. I lived at home for about like a year and then at that time I transferred to you Umass. As my studies kind of kept on getting more in depth, I started to figure out that I really liked them my new major public health I you know I started to meet some new people and most of them were from you know the friends that I had for my hometown and I met their friends that they met up here. I would say that when it comes to you know now being 22 and graduating in a month I would say like the biggest difference from like now to when I was 18 in high school and like you know kind of just bullying and obsessed with football is that I kind of realized that education is definitely you know the ultimate way forward because you know I was just so into Sport and then I realized that we're all just lifelong learners and why limit myself and put time into you know a sport just entertain myself when I could go out and like learn something. My dad was my football coach in high school so he obviously kind of wanted me to keep on playing but he obviously had no like there's no pressure that came with like he wasn't going to force me to keep on playing. He would have liked it if I did but, he was totally supportive that I decided I wasn't going to play anymore.

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