We all love the success stories of athletes living out their dream and earning college athletic scholarships. However, we must remember that not everyone will gain that elusive prize. For some, they will not reach their goals despite their rare and unique athletic gifts. But how does one cope with that and move on?

I listened to a talk from a good friend of mine about her response to her setbacks. Take a moment and put yourselves in the shoes of Seattle Prep Volleyball player, Rae Ann Haistings. I was left inspired by her talk, not only because of her courageous perseverance, but also of the motivation she gave me to do my best in all that I do.

Read Rae Ann's message after the jump.

Setbacks
By Rae Ann Haistings

Sometimes I feel as if everything I’ve ever thought or known has been questioned. In life things change, all the time, and the saying that is always repeated is true… “Life isn’t fair”. But as you start to think “well then why has this or that happened to me and not them?” People always just simply tell you that “Life happens, and there’s nothing that you can do to change the past, why don’t you just let it go”.

I’ll be the first to say that I’m tired of that explanation, I’ve heard it so many times and from so many people and it doesn’t suffice anymore. I don’t know what I want to hear exactly, I guess I just need a different answer.

Since the start of High school, volleyball has been my life. As a freshman I started on the Varsity volleyball team. It seemed at that point that my life would turn out perfect. All I wanted was to play volleyball, keep getting better; I loved it, everything about it. I was going to play four years of high school volleyball and four years of club, I was going to get recruited and have a scholarship to some D1 college.

That was my dream as a freshman. I honestly could not get enough of just being out on the court whether it was a game or practice. My favorite thing or feeling was the moment that you know you were getting better because of how hard you worked. The simplest way to explain me was in one word, volleyball.

Because that’s who I was everything that I did revolved around volleyball…It was my life and my future. I constantly made sacrifices for it because it had always been my “ticket to college”. All of us here have had dreams, some of us may be in the process of furthering those dreams and others may have had to replace their dreams with new ones.

There was nothing that could get in the way of my goal to play in college.

Then it happened, the one thing I feared the most, something that could actually get in the way of my dream. February of my sophomore year I was playing in a routine game at the Northwest Pacific qualifier in Spokane I landed off a block and was suddenly curled up on the floor crawling off the court.

I had torn my ACL and proceeded to have surgery two weeks later. Devastating right? Was my dream going to be destroyed along with my ACL? No, and for seven months I was at the hospital every week for physical therapy and every day I worked to gain back the muscle that I had lost.

I’m not going to lie it was hard, but the hardest part wasn’t the physical work it was the mental focus. It was the ability to really analyze my own mind and learn what I needed to do to overcome what had happened. This was a setback to my dream, but my dream had not changed, just been postponed.

I had to find some way to wrap my mind around the fact that there was a possibility that my knee may never feel the same, but that was not going to stop me from playing as hard as I could once I was healthy. Once I was able to play again I remembered how much I had enjoyed just playing.

A friend explained to me the concept of “Joga Bonita” which translates to play beautiful, I had forgotten how to love what I was doing like when I was just learning and there was no stress involved in playing. Unfortunately this is a concept in which I have had a lot of trouble putting into play in my own life. And just when I was getting back into the swing of things, Two months into my club season and my first travel tournament of my 17’s season, I was playing in a college showcase in Las Vegas and I dove for a ball between tables and didn’t come up.

I tore a ligament in my elbow called the UCL, I had torn it right off my humorous. Again, I had surgery two weeks later. This meant that I would miss another four months of volleyball.

Now something that I should explain is that sophomore and junior year are the two most important years for Volleyball’s college recruiting. So what am I to do now? I have this dream of playing volleyball in college, but I’ve been injured for almost the entire recruiting process.

Well my two days after I was cleared to play following my elbow surgery I played in the Junior Olympics in Miami. It felt good to come back and play after almost a year of constant recovery, but nothing has really been the same. I had gone from being the freshman starting on varsity to the “injured one” and the backup player that transition was hard and one I never thought would happen.

The setbacks that I’ve endured are in terms nothing compared to others. Because think of It this way…I’m still able to walk, and do normal things like drive, and ride bikes. There are much worse injuries and setbacks to endure. There was a point during this process that I thought I lost who I was, because all I was volleyball, what would my Identity be if I were to lose it completely?

Volleyball was the only thing that I had going for me, and suddenly it started to become like a job to me, something that I knew I had to do; but honestly didn’t really want to. Until I was able to realize that there is more to me then just volleyball.

The mental ability to overcome obstacles is half the battle of any setback. At times I wish that I had a time machine that could take me back to sophomore year before my injuries. But as I stop and think about it I realize that doing that would take away from the person I’ve become and the character that I’ve gained from my struggles and setbacks.

During my recovery process I questioned my faith all the time; I tried to come up with reasons of why this had happened to me. And then I realized I don’t need a concrete answer I just know that I’ve become a better person by going through my struggles.

I don’t know everything there is to setbacks and life, and my injuries were not as devastating as they seemed. I may never have the life that I imagined my freshman year for myself, but rarely does that happen, I’m still struggling to earn a scholarship, but all I can do is make the best out of what I’ve been given, who knows if my struggle will ever completely end?

Life is a struggle think of life as a mountain, if the mountain was just a sheer cliff we would never be able to climb it, but since the mountain has boulders and trees we can use those obstacles to get to the top. We will always have struggles, the question is not how to get rid of them, but how we choose to grow in character from them.

I know I wouldn’t be up here today if it wasn’t for the character and courage that I’ve gained through all of my struggles. I challenge everyone to look at their own dreams, and the setbacks they have endured, and realize what character and growth you have gained from those challenges.