Underdog who?

Photo by Luis Reyes on Unsplash

There’s something frustrating about being an underdog. There’s something infuriating about someone looking at you and seeing something less than what you know you are. For all my life I have been that underdog. Looking back, I wasn’t that popular with the girls in school, and I wasn’t usually picked for sport teams until all the better kids were picked.

I had a few teachers that said I was bright and had potential, and others that told me that I wouldn’t amount to much. As much as those moments hurt, they were a reflection of what I was. If I was playing against someone one-on-one, your smart choice would be to bet on the other guy. But if there was anything anyone could say about me, it’s that I don’t go down without a fight. During my later years of high school, I was beginning to take myself, my future, and the way I was perceived more seriously.

It was the pacer test, one of the moments throughout the year when an entire class could see who the best runners were. I had a history of being one of the earliest to tap-out due to my extremely low stamina. My sophomore year, I had done alright. I wasn’t the best or the most athletic by that point, but I was certainly improving. I saw the students that were always the last to tap-out, the ones that kept going and how other students would look at them. They were animals, and the people that watched them would stand amazed as the pacer would go into lap fifty, then sixty and eventually seventy. I was determined that I would reach those numbers and stand among the best of my class before I left school.

My senior year, I took weight training on top of the regular gym class and started a diet. I didn’t have dumbbells or exercise equipment at home, so I filled old laundry detergent bottles of various sizes with water. I swore to myself that I would lose weight. After a while, I began to see the results. I could play basketball for longer periods of time without having to sit down, I could do dozens of pushups, eventually having to do fifty in the middle of the gym as a punishment for goofing off. But all that hard work was kept hidden, until the day of the final pacer test.

The usual kids were the ones anticipated to do the best. The student athletes and skinnier, more agile kids were of course the ones everyone expected to do well. But in the eyes of my classmates, I was just a big dude in over his head. The pacer test began, and the first twenty laps were standard. The kids who didn’t care, didn’t run, or didn’t try were eliminated quickly. By the time we were on forty laps, I was already beyond my average. And by the time we hit fifty, only about fifteen out of sixty-odd students were still on their feet.

I still remember it like it was yesterday. Some kids were telling me I had already proved I wasn’t just some big kid to be looked down upon. Some kids were getting impatient with the test that just dragged on and on. Some encouraged me to keep going as far as my body would let me. Some told me to be the last one standing. There was one voice that mattered in that moment: the voice in my head that told me that I wasn’t done until everyone in that gym respected my effort – until everyone in that gym respected me. Eventually, the laps reached the seventies and there were five students left, the pinnacle of student performance in our school and I was finally among them. In the end I didn’t beat those five students, but I still won. I was satisfied with myself, my effort, and my progress and in that moment, my mindset altered. It no longer mattered what the other kids thought of me. Ironic as it was, in that moment, being looked at so positively…I didn’t care anymore. I was happy with who I became and what I accomplished. I was happy with the discipline I developed and the result that my hard work brought. I’m fine being the underdog, because “underdog” is just a label that others perceive you to be. You can be an underdog; you can try, and you can fail. But if you keep trying, keep striving, keep battling, that alone is a win. Never let up. Embrace your struggle and live your truth. That is the way of the underdog.