Are you busy this summer? Are you busy with endless nights of fun with your best friends? I wish I could say I can spend most of the summer walking around with an ice cream in my hand with my friends while feeling the ocean breeze blowing on my face. That would be an ideal summer.

I’ll be busy spending my time practicing an hour away three times a week or traveling to Pennsylvania, Virginia, or New Jersey every weekend until the end of July for club lacrosse.

Not only does this take up a lot my parents and my own time, it’s also very costly. Between gas, hotel rooms, and tournament fees, a couple thousand dollars are spent per year. Spending this much time with my team helps me build friendships but I’d much rather be getting tan at the beach instead of getting stuck with sock and goggle tans.

Even though I love lacrosse, sometimes having a break is needed. Playing sports year round definitely has its benefits but summer is my time to relax and have fun. I can’t relax when I constantly have to be places all over the east coast giving one-hundred percent in every game I play.

I couldn’t imagine my life without lacrosse but it takes up my whole summer, forcing me to be unable to go to parties and bonfires with the people I don’t see every day anymore. High-school will fly by and being busy for most of my summer causes me to miss out on a lot of fun adventures.

Some of my friends play club lacrosse as well but they don’t partake in as many fall and summer tournaments as I do. Now that the recruiting process can’t occur until junior year, girls my age should not have to play six tournaments when no college coaches can talk to them.

I miss walking around Ocean City trying to catch the bus with my sister to go to surf shops to try in cute bathing suits while stopping at Dumsers on the way. The late nights spent on the boardwalk eating Thrashers french fries and going on the rides is something I always look forward for. I’d much rather be walking around in a cute suit that a sweaty lacrosse uniform.

In my typical summer, I have my sweaty feet hanging out the window, blaring the music, eager to get home to shower. In your summer, you get back to your beach house after being on the beach all day to wash the sand and salt out of your hair, getting ready to go out to dinner with your family and friends to share memories and laughs.

I know if I want to continue my lacrosse career to the collegian level I have to play club but I need summer to decompress from school stress. Summer lacrosse is tons of fun but it takes up my whole summer. In the upcoming years, summer will be longer so hopefully I will have more time to relax.