My Story - Part 1
- Debbie Tinez
- Dec 4, 2016
- 6 min read
Memories, Insights and Lessons Learned while being a Student-Athlete
My name is Deborah Martínez, I am from San Carlos, Sonora, México, and I am 28 years old. I want to share with you an idea, a passion and some life experiences. I strongly believe that by doing this I will touch your hearts, and I will try to show you something that has always been there but that has not been used to the extent that it should be used: sports as a medium to empower the individual.
Sports level the playing field, socially, humanly. When an athlete steps into the field, the court, the ring, the room… into the battle field, that athlete transforms into a handful of emotions, reactions, strategies, and mind and body synchronize in a beautiful way that can be definitely felt by that athlete. It almost makes you invisible - you become the environment. There is no amount of money that help you win that battle, there are no letters attached before your name to let people know how much education you have, here you only have your mind and body as tools for achieving your goal, to win. Imagine, every single elite athlete is going through this, and when two or more athletes are put on the same field, they get to share an amazing experience full of intense and real emotions... when two athletes are facing each other on the field, they get deflated to their human essence.
When the moment of truth comes, when you have to hit or throw that first shot, I can bet that almost all of us feel those legs trembling. The quality of that shot and all the ones to come is going to be the result of the thousands of hours of hard work that you have put into perfecting that technique. That shot will be the realization of all those long nights that you had to sleep in order to recover, of those sore muscles derived from long practices and workouts, all those non-attended parties and the constant battle with your ego that tells you over and over that you can’t do it. That one shot is loaded with thousands of practice shots in your mind. I am sure that by 17 you already have those 10,000 hours people talk about. Those shots that you hit as a broken record, where the only thing changes is your outfit, the weather or what’s happening in the world, because you are there in the same place at the same time hitting that shot, and your friends can confirm that. Thus, imagine when two people or two teams meet on the field, the only thing that counts are the hours, the passion and the intelligence that they have trained with. As a former elite athlete, it keeps surprising me to think that the formula is usually pretty easy: the harder you work the better you perform, period. In life, there are so many other things aside from hard work, that can make life unlike sports, very unfair.
However, being a good athlete is like being a great speaker or having lots of carisma, is a quality that can really help you in life. Being an athlete goes way beyond dribbling everyone without losing the ball, it is all about having a strategy to win a match, is being aware of your body and your environment, is knowing your limits and what is needed to improve the performance of your body, is knowing when to stop, when to accept your loss and shake your opponent’s hand. I have no doubt that these abilities can be applied to school life, to work and interpersonal relations in a very similar way.
Next, I will share with you my story and the story of nine incredible women who kindly have shared their experiences with me. Notice that I know ever single one of these women, with many I have shared the court, uncountable bottles of water and some tears for sure. I thank them for being great teammates whose skills complemented mine, and because of that, I was able to feel how success feels like. Thank you for believing in me on the court, for giving the responsibility of taking care of that ball and for letting me run by your side, thank you for holding my hand because without your strength I wouldn’t have been able to do it. In that balance of talents there is an enormous teaching of humbleness by letting others finish the job when they are better than you. I also want to thank those within this set of women that have been my rivals on the court. Thank you for setting the bar so high and pushing me to be better, without you nothing could have happened. In fact, in Mexico we need more rivals, we need more elite athletes to incentivize more girls, like the onces we were, to develop their abilities. I want to thank my roommate in college who saw me battle my ego, and who I keep cheering on on her quest to get to the Olympics, I love you and thank you for leading by example. Among these women is also my childhood best friend who people thought was my twin. She was always my rival and hardly my teammate because we were usually the only two up for some outside sporty activity. However, you were my childhood teammate, and I will always be there for you.
Ultimately, I tell this story because I have lived it intensely, and I honesty think that I have lived a dream where I have been able to discover or create a very unique essence… and that is empowering. But I knew I wasn’t the only one! I want to share a little bit of the extraordinary stories under these women’s belt. Being banned or persuaded away from doing sports in a common thing heard in all the conversations I've had with them - specially, as Mexican women, we were not allowed to play soccer when we were young. We lived in a society that held machismo close to its chest and soccer was a macho sport. I swear that if we had been allowed and supported to play soccer, we would all be soccer rockstars!
The original idea was for them to tell me a life lesson learn through sports. Something that comes back to them pretty often, something that helps them make a decision when life is not so obvious. Something that had forged their character. Thus, following this request, I will share with you that episode in my life that I think of directly or indirectly everyday.
My mind is a little foggy with regard of the month, the day, what I was doing before or after… but that day were the try outs for the State basketball team. I don’t know what did it, if it was too hot or I was not in the best shape, but I felt like I was dying by running from one side of the court to the other. Short of breath, not really thinking about it, I asked for a substitution. It is worth mentioning that I was the leader of the municipal team, and I really thought I belonged to the State team… come on ¡nobody could stop me in my municipality! My ego was about to be shattered when I asked for that substitution. One second after, they blew the whistle to end the try outs and my quitter behavior clarified every doubt they could still had. They didn’t call me for the State team, and in my mind I always thought I had shown them that I was a quitter, but I didn't think this was correct! I was not a quitter! or at least I didn’t want anyone to think of me that way!
Since that precise moment, I have made it a point to prove the world that I am a warrior, that I will not be stopped easily, that everything can be achieved with handwork, that sky is the limit and that the impossible only takes a little longer.
The following year I did make it to the team, and my team and I became the Sonora women’s state team to win nationals after a long time. Imagine what a lesson, from quitter to National champ. I understood that persistence and dedication pays off. I learned that when I was 14 years old, and I swear that this is part of my essence today.
I think there are so many other young athletes among us in Mexico that can live life changing experiences like this one if we give them the support they need. How is it possible that we haven’t done this well yet?
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