One of the hardest things in life is going against the flow, and creating your own path. When I was five years old, I began to play baseball. I immediately started to love the game. I always wanted to play catch with my dad or go hit at the batting cages. My dream was to someday play in the major league. Once I realized that dream was probably not going to come true I began to rethink my playing days. I tried out for the Maine South baseball team my freshman year and I ended up making the team. I tried everything I could to get better, but it turned out I just wasn’t the best player, and not blessed with the gift of speed which is important in baseball. I wasn’t a starter and saw only a limited amount of playing time, which made me realize that I wasn’t having a lot of fun anymore. After not playing a lot, I seriously needed to re-evaluate whether or not I was going to try out sophomore year. I struggled with my decision all year.

Let’s see.

Play baseball. Sit on bench. Freeze in Spring. Sweat in Summer. No Spring Break.

Don’t play baseball. Spring Break in sunny Florida. No 6:00 am practices. More free time.
When I looked at it that way, the decision seemed pretty clear. No baseball for me!

After I made the decision to quit playing baseball my sophomore year, many people started to raise questions. I had played on a travel baseball team from fourth grade through eighth grade. A lot of the kids who were on that travel team were also on the Maine South team with me. I developed a good relationship with all of my teammates and they were some of my best friends. Many were disappointed in hearing that I wasn’t going to play baseball anymore. They started to ask me what I was going to do instead of baseball. Parents were questioning my parents about what I was going to do as if playing baseball was the end all, be all.

What’s David going to do if he doesn’t play baseball? What other sport will he do? Who will he hang out with when all of the boys are playing baseball? What about summer ball? Won’t he be bored?

Thank you all for your concern but I’ll be just fine! It’s not like I’m moving to a foreign country, I’m just not going to play sophomore baseball in high school. REALLY!

As it turned out, I actually didn’t know what I was going to do. Baseball was the only thing that I had consistently done and been passionate about throughout my life. I had played it for eleven years and that was basically my life. I tried to think of another sport that I could play, but none of the other spring sports were very appealing to me.

A slight panic set in for a short time. What if everyone was right? What if I had nothing to do and all of my friends forgot about me? I had visions of sitting in my room staring out the window, listening to Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself.” All by myself, don’t want to be, all by myself, anymore... Then my rational side came back and my panic disappeared. I would be fine, I just needed to find a new passion.

The light bulb finally went off after that first spring without baseball. I decided that I wanted to try and do something that could ultimately help other people. I had been volunteering at Have Dreams working with kids with autism for six years so I wanted to do something that would benefit the kids at Have Dreams but also keep me involved. I decided to start up a program at Maine South called Hawks Touchdown for Kids program. This program worked with the football team to raise money for local charities. The program is based on the performance of the Maine South Football team and how many touchdowns they score. Members of the community pledge money ($1 or more per touchdown) for each touchdown the Maine South football team scores during the season. Based on the number of touchdowns, that is the amount of money donated to the charity at the end of the year. For example, if you pledged one dollar per touchdown and the team scored fifty touchdowns, you would owe fifty dollars at the end of the year. Creating this program was really exciting because it allowed me to stay connected with sports (even though it wasn’t baseball) and also help out the community.

My favorite experience from the season was inviting the Friday Teen Class from Have Dreams to come watch a football game. They came to the sophomore game before the varsity game and Coach Inserra had all of the senior football players come and sit with the kids from Have Dreams. The teens loved it. They asked lots of questions, got to cheer and just hang out like typical teens. It was nice to see the football players interacting so well with the teens from Have Dreams as well. That outing exemplified what Have Dreams is all about - giving kids with autism the opportunity to experience friendship - practice social and communication skills - feel like they belong.

I learned so much from starting this program at my school:

- I became more vocal. I was always very shy and didn’t like to talk in front of people. I was very nervous having to present the business plan to Mr. Messmer and Mr. Berendt, but now I have become friends with both of them and enjoy the opportunity to talk with them.

- I took a leadership role in creating the program. I was also chosen to become part of PAC which I never would have even considered applying for before this program.

- I learned to not be afraid to take risks. I didn’t know whether the program would be successful or not but I knew I wanted to try. After I presented the plan to Mr. Messmer and Mr. Berendt, they both liked the idea and said let’s move ahead.

OK, great now what? I was flying solo and not sure how I was going to pull this off. I had to create a website to track the pledges that came in, and had no idea how to do that, but I did it. Even though they liked the idea, I didn’t really have support from other people yet, so I had to start the program all on my own. I started by sending emails to friends and family, encouraging them to pledge. I created flyers and gave them to people I knew, hoping a hand written flyer would encourage them to join. I also talked to Mrs.Muck who was the president of the football boosters and sent her a flyer to forward to all of the football parents. At the beginning of the football season, I didn’t have a lot of pledges lined up. I only had a handful of money lined up for each touchdown, but no where near the goal of $5,000 I set for myself to raise for Have Dreams. At the start of the first home game, I still wasn’t happy with the amount of pledges so I asked my friends to help me pass out flyers to everyone entering the stadium during each home game. This idea really worked. I began to get more pledges after after each home game. I created a new flyer for every home game, and for each game I passed them out to fans that showed up. Many people I gave them to had already received them at an earlier game but it was a good reminder to sign up if they hadn’t done so already. Personally handing out flyers really helped get more pledges, and after just a couple games, the amount of pledges nearly doubled! As long as the football team succeeded, I was confident I was going to meet my goal of 5,000 dollars.

As it turns out, I was right. By the end of the season, the football team had scored 60 touchdowns, which resulted in $6,200 for my charity. I was so excited to tell Have Dreams that the Hawk Touchdowns for Kids program had raised that amount of money for them. Once I collected all of the money, we sent the money and they wrote a big check to Have Dreams.

Creating this program was something I felt was very beneficial and was something to help me get my mind off of quitting baseball. After quitting baseball, I got involved in other school activities, but most importantly, created this program. This experience took me out of my comfort zone initially, but ended up expanding my comfort zone to new heights. By doing this, I had no regrets about quitting baseball, and I still don’t. Even though I sometimes miss the game, I find ways to enjoy it in other ways, like coaching a little league team during the summer.

The most important thing that I learned from my experience of quitting baseball was discovering my leadership capabilities. I realized something about myself that I hadn’t realized before, and that was my ability to really be a leader. Quitting baseball might not have seemed like the ideal thing to do, but if I had continued to play, I would not have been able to develop into the person that I am today.