“If you truly love the sport, it pays off in the end.”

Jasmine Lam

“I play tennis, I wrestle and I am also on the track team. Even though I’ve only done wrestling for two years, it’s really grown on me and it’s something I’m very passionate about. In my first year in NCS, there were only 220 girl wrestlers, but this year, there were 125 more girls at NCS, which is almost a 50 percent growth. It’s great to see how the sport has grown as a whole. I like doing these sports because it gives me a place to away from academics and de-stress. It helps me take my mind off of school for those two hours a day. You can’t let yourself think about school and sports at the same time because you have to dedicate yourself to one thing at a time to excel at it. It can be hard to balance because there are two to three hours of practice every day, and most Saturdays are taken up by tournaments or meets. But in the end, if you truly love the sport and commit yourself to it, then I think it pays off in the end.”