3 Sport Athlete...

Playing 3 sports in high school isn't easy, and there have been days when I'm coming back home around 10 PM, 3 days a week, with tests and quizzes the next day. I think, throughout the whole school year, if I had to count how many days I had taken the bus back home, I could probably count them on my fingers. For a normal student, a school day probably lasts 7 hours, but for me, I was spending an average of 11 hours a day on school grounds, and some days even up to 13 hours. We would have early morning workouts starting at 5:30 AM, and then I would have after-school workouts from 4 to 7 PM. I would always just shake it off and keep going. Everyone would always ask me how I balance my studies and my sports, and I would always just say, "It's not that hard, I just do all the studying at school, and once I get home, I just eat and sleep." Not until my sophomore year, first semester, when I scored a 60 on AP Pre-Calc, did I realize school isn't enough, so I started missing the first bit of practice so I could go to tutoring, and that still wasn't enough. So then I used to come home and study till late nights and spent early mornings getting extra help for classes. Because of the lack of sleep, I had trouble focusing in class. On top of the 3 sports, I was doing DECA as well my 10th-grade year, so they had hour-long meetings and tests and competitions throughout the year. I remember one week where I had 2 AP tests on a Friday, I had an away JV football game on that Thursday, and a Chemistry test the day before; that Thursday night was my first time I just didn't sleep at all. I had stayed up from 6:30 AM Thursday to Friday 4 PM.