Posts

We pine for the old days as athletes

Image
 If you play sports or have played sports in your life you can remember when your athletic peak was or is currently. It may have been that high school baseball career where you hit .290 as a junior, the senior year of a college football player where they averaged 120 yards per game or even a hall of fame professional athlete in the year where they broke the NFL record in rushing (Erik Dickerson in 1984 with 2,105 rushing yards). Whenever it was for you, you probably remember it. For me, I have had three different peaks for various different reasons in various different sports. In 2012 I started the year going second team all-state in tennis, getting far in my counties section tournament with my doubles partner and going all-section in football averaging 11 tackles a game. In 2015 I made the varsity football team at Lafayette College after thinking I would leave the world of competitive sports behind me. In 2025 I raised my tennis ranking heavily and lowered my handicap in golf to i...
Post a Comment
Read more

We fetishize certain jobs and it is not good

Image
 There are many jobs out there for many people. Some people want to become plumbers, some doctors, some lawyers, but how can you really know if a job is a good fit? It is hard to tell; you can figure it out through life experience and self-discovery, but the average college graduate is 22 years old, and many do not have it figured out by this point. If you cannot figure out what's a good fit, you can go the psychometric route like me and take a personality or aptitude test to figure out what you're good at or what your tendencies are. But this costs a lot of time and money that not everyone has. My personal feeling is that when you're in your most impressionable years you should take a wide range of courses in high school and college and learn to specialize later. When I was growing up, I always thought I was going to be a doctor. I brought this thought with me from my sophomore year of high school until I dropped the whole endeavor when I was in my third year of college. T...
Post a Comment
Read more

How athletes regain identity after giving up their sport

Image
 If you're like me, you have been playing sports since you were a young kid and loved them. When I was small, I played just about every sport from recreational baseball and basketball leagues to junior tennis and even a little bit of Ice Hockey . When it came to playing sports competitively, I decided to play both tennis and football, one because I was good at them and two because I loved to compete. But there always comes a day where you need to hang up the cleats or sneakers and not play competitively anymore. For me that was after my college football experience at Lafayette College ; I was so sick of football I even transferred to a school that didn't have a football team. I decided to enjoy my last few years of college not playing competitive sports and just being a regular student, hardly ever playing anything. Well actually I played pickup basketball at NYU's gym after lifts, but those were my cardio workouts, I was not tied to the outcome of our games. My athletic ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why playing sports in adulthood keeps you mind sharp

Image
 Many sports have one common denominator... They are made for kids to build camaraderie and teach them how to work in teams. Many peewee football players and recreational baseball players parents are not using the sport as a workout, rather a socialization tool to help their kid make friends. It is not until the high school or college level that these kids get significant workout benefits from these sports. But what about adulthood? Are there recreational baseball leagues and pickup football leagues as adults? The answer is yes, but less adults participate in adult sports leagues than should. I would argue if you're not a gym rat or iron man runner then you should be participating in these extracurricular activities in order to keep yourself fit. I myself participate in many USTA Tennis Leagues, and golf with friends once and sometimes twice a week during the summer. This keeps my mind sharp for my day to day working activities I must complete during my engineering grad school curr...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Story Playing Division 1 Football for a Year

Image
When you think of top athletic universities you may think of Alabama University , Florida University, University of Texas, USC, or any other school in the power 5 division 1 conferences. But many people don't know that top academic universities also have high level sports, maybe not as high level as a power 5 school, but high level, nevertheless. Boston University has a renowned Hockey program that produces many NHL players; Columbia has the top-rated tennis player in all the NCAA, and Lehigh has had a top tier Wrestling program for most of the 21st century. Schools that are very academically inclined do have sports, contrary to popular belief. My first two years of college I participated in one of these school's football programs when I walked onto Lafayette Colleges D1AA Football program . Coming out of high school I was recruited for mainly division 3 football schools with a few division 1 looks. Some of these schools were Ithaca College, Tufts, Union College, Cornell, Co...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why we go crazy for the Olympics

Image
Yesterday morning, the USA Hockey Team defeated the Canadian Hockey Team in overtime at the gold medal match in the 2026 Winter Olympics. Fans across the United States woke up early (8 am EST) to watch in their homes, bars and watch parties around the country. The Olympics is a global phenomenon that happens every 2 years (Summer every 4 years and winter every 4 years, staggered by 2 years). So why do sports watchers and non-sports watchers alike go crazy for the Olympics? I would argue it's because of two main reasons; national identity is tapped into, and the general population (sports watchers and non-sports watchers alike) love a good comeback story. Doesn't matter your politics, conservative, liberal, or moderate, if you were born and raised somewhere, there is a shared national pride over the country you reside. Take the USA for example, politically we are as divided as we've ever been, but when a team USA athlete takes home the gold in an event, there is a shared fee...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inside the Country Club Athletes Mind

Image
It is often thought that what makes an athlete great is his or her physical toolkit to adapt to any situation on the field or court. I would argue that a physical toolkit is the baseline to make an athlete decent, but what differentiates an athlete from good and great is their cognitive ability to be aware what is going on in his or her domain, as well as their strategy and planning on how to make their next move after their opponent strikes. This is most prevalent in "country club sports" (I say country club because these are the predominant sports played at a country club) such as golf and tennis or any racquet sport. In golf you have to analyze the entire hole and strategize how you will attack it. Not only that, after you strategize, then you have to make different variations of "golf swings" in order to drive, approach, chip and putt the ball into the hole. This is not even counting if you get into trouble in a bunker or by trees and have to hit a "bunker ...
Post a Comment
Read more