My first word was “ball.” I’m not saying this to act like some athletic prodigy. If you had a contest within the Daily Trojan sports staff on how athletically gifted each of us is, I probably wouldn’t be at the top of the leaderboard.

What I’m trying to say is whether you realize it or not, sports are a defining piece of life.

As a child, you don’t remember most of your “firsts” — first steps, first words, first laughs. You hear stories from family about these moments and wonder why they remember each so vividly or why their eyes light up when they think of “baby you.”

Many “firsts” in my life revolved around sports. I went to my first baseball game when I was just five days old. It was a foggy afternoon in early May at the dilapidated fields south of my hometown, where my brother chewed pink bubblegum and blew bubbles bigger than my newborn head.

I remember my first swim meet like it was yesterday. My stomach was full of pool water and my arms were covered in black Sharpie with numbers referencing each heat and lane I’d swim that day. I was disqualified in the 100 Individual Medley event because my breaststroke was simply incorrect. It hasn’t improved much.

One of my first late nights was at Oracle Park — formerly AT&T Park — in San Francisco, watching the Giants probably lose. A fly ball whizzed to the row right behind my family’s seats. That game I was named the “Ball Magnet” because three more fly balls smashed into our section that very same night.

Alongside firsts, you start experiencing “lasts” for the first time when you grow up: last day of work at your first job, last soccer game (mine was at age five; I was more into the post-game orange slices than the actual game), last high school dance, last day in your hometown before you leave for college.

Some of our “lasts” come as a surprise. My last basketball game was played innocently, even ignorantly, months before I had considered a path off the court. My last swim meet was my sophomore year of high school before a global pandemic changed everything.

Some “lasts” are more intense. My last water polo game as a senior in high school ended with me watching the red digital clock count down from three, feeling hot tears leak out of my already bloodshot and chlorinated eyes.

What I hadn’t considered, though, was that my final games back home didn’t actually count as my official “lasts.” For this fact, I have one organization to thank: USC Club Sports. This isn’t sponsored, though, I’d sure as hell take a check for this advertisement.

Continuing to play my sport has completely changed my college experience for the better. By no means am I the best player or the fastest swimmer, but that isn’t the important thing about playing a club or intramural sport.

In high school, I was burnt out — everyone was. It felt like if you weren’t approaching the breaking point, you weren’t working hard enough. School, sports, student organizations and work became items on a to-do list, not ingredients for a happy and well-rounded life.

Growing up in this generation, sports have exceeded their original purpose as a pastime. They became an identity, influenced life goals and stretched young people thin with intense club practices and the threat of not going Division I hanging over their head.

What playing sports as a non-DI athlete in college does for the psyche is truly magical — being an athlete is no longer a job, it is for the love of the game. Taking the power back from my sport, so to speak, made me love it even more.

If I’m slammed with homework, my coaches — two of my best friends here at school — will understand that I’ll be late to practice. If it’s Sunday afternoon and we played Stanford the night before, we’ll adjust the swim set as needed.

What this all boils down to is that my life at USC would have been drastically less fulfilled if I hadn’t decided to jump into the pool with a bunch of strangers that fateful evening as a freshman. So I urge you, whoever reaches these last lines, to take your sport back for yourself. Playing for yourself and no one else holds more power than you know. You just have to take that first step.

(And pay IMLeagues $25 per semester, but who’s counting?)

Dana Hammerstrom is a junior writing about the mental health of collegiate athletes and the emotional pressures they face in her column, “Heart to Heart.”