After seeing me play a competitive soccer game in my natural position, goalkeeper, co-founder of Cincinnati Soccer Club (Cincy SC) Russell Lewis wanted me to become one of their Goalkeeper coaches. He told me that there was something unique about me just based on the way I communicated, encouraged, pushed, and believed in my teammates during the game. Upon reflection, I realized that this was yet another opportunity for me to impact the lives of people. I felt like this experience was going to allow me to touch the lives of young players and leave a positive mark on their development and future careers. So, I chose to not allow my introverted nature to prevent me from going through with it.

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As expected, the experience taught me several lessons that I will carry with me throughout my life, none more so than the importance of putting in "childish" effort in everything I do. To understand what I mean by that, you must understand how I ran my training sessions. They were comprised of regular training drills, challenges and rewards. The only way to earn the reward was to complete the challenge. Let me tell you, those kids were relentless. They did not know the meaning of surrender, giving up, or backing out. It did not matter how many times they tried, how long it took, whether they failed or got close to completing the challenge, whether they were tired or felt like quitting, they just kept going until they completed the challenge and got their reward. Their relentless effort and drive to get things done no matter what, was a reminder I needed. In addition to that, I learned patience, understanding, how to teach others, and more useful skills that are going to help me develop into the Global scholar I want to become.

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Moving forward, I intend to make more people aware of what I have learned during this experience. I want to continue leading by example. My goal is to teach people the importance of hard work and relentless effort because nothing in life is easy. I believe that we all need to be reminded that there is no gain without pain. I want this experience to create the spark that will ignite someone’s drive to achieve what they could not before or simply gave up on. . Hence why I challenge anyone with whom I talk with about this experience, to reflect deeply on the following question daily:

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"What can I do to get better today?

Today! Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next year."

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