Short Take: You Can Always Walk Away

There are some exceptionally worthwhile lessons to be learned from participating in competitive sports. One, for example, is that there are winners and losers, and if you want to be the winner, you have to work harder than the next person. Another is that no matter how hard you work, you won’t always win. Take losing as gracefully as winning, as they’re both part of the deal. These are lessons that will serve a person well in their life as well as their sport.

But if you participate in a sport that isn’t destined to land you in a million dollar contract, then you compete for the joy of the sport. Some people thrive on the stress of top-level competition and some burn out from it. Some days you’re up for the challenge and some days you just don’t have it in you.

But if you still want to compete, and if you still want to win, you have to fight through the down days, the overwhelming stress, the coaches who push too hard, pushing you to your breaking point and beyond, because that’s the nature of competition. Nobody gets to be at the top without pushing themselves hard. If you don’t want to push, someone else does and will. And they will beat you, and you will lose. Losing sucks.

And that’s why top-level athletes persist in their efforts to win, tolerate their mean coaches, show up again every day to try harder. They do what they have to do because that’s the only way to be the best.  But don’t blame the “win at all costs” culture of competition that it’s hard. No one competes to lose.

Some days competitive skiing brought me so much joy, but some days it brought more pain and danger to my young body and mind than I could handle.

I didn’t feel I had a choice. I was tied down by a sport that was part of my identity, by the expectations of my hometown and by contracts that required me to compete in specific races. I felt there was no space for me to have a bad day, even when skiing on a bad day could mean — and for me did mean — landing on your head after a jump, almost breaking your spine and having chronic back pain for the rest of your life. I started to resent the sport that had once been my escape.

When you make the decision to go on tour, you know what’s expected of you. You know what you signed up for. It’s the life you chose. You become part of a bigger thing than you. It has risks. It will tax you mentally and physically. But you knew that going in.

Then, in 2014, during my first year of college, came the last straw. I learned that the dates for nationals were during a school week and would force me to miss classes. I reached out to the heads of the U.S. Telemark Ski Association and appealed to them. I told them I couldn’t miss more school. The association’s board of directors unanimously denied me a waiver.

Here’s how I heard the board’s response: You either care about this sport or you don’t. It felt to me like a choice between giving up my life and health for skiing or quitting. So I made the choice: I was out. I chose to violate my contract. I chose to give up my spot on the team. But really, I chose myself. I chose my future and my well-being.

This is exactly how it should be. Whether it’s because the sport you once loved has now become an unwanted burden or that competing required more of you than you were willing to give, there is always the option of saying “enough.” Sure, you’ve dedicated a huge part of your life to the sport, and your persona is wrapped up in it as everybody points at you and says, “Oh, look, there’s Zoe the skier.” And maybe someone, deep down, you still remember the thing about it you loved that made you want to do it in the first place.

But you have a choice to say no. You are not a slave of fate, but the master of your own. You don’t get to tell the sport how it should be to suit your needs, but you do get to choose whether you want to dance to the sport’s tune. And if you choose not to, then no one can make you. You are responsible for your own well-being and happiness. If it no longer makes you happy, walk away.

Just remember that when you do, you are no longer a competitor. You have options as far as what you do, but the sporting universe doesn’t have to play by your rules anymore than you have to play by its rule.