HARROGATE, Tenn. -- Below is an essay from Lincoln Memorial University freshman men's golfer Shelby Meyer (Bristol, Va.) titled "My Life in Sports". In it, Meyer recounts the triumphs and tribulations of his eclectic experiences with a variety of sports, which ultimately created his passion for golf and brought him to Lincoln Memorial.
 

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Ever since I could first walk, I was like a little energizer bunny. Almost everywhere we went my mom had trouble keeping up with me. If we were at a grocery store, I ran down the aisles. At home, if I wasn't in my bedroom, I was outside playing in the yard or the forest. Virtually anything I did would turn into a competition. More often than not, these competitions would include racing my mom to the car or running away from my uncle pretending that he was a monster. My family thought that I would never run out of energy and decided I needed to try something more entertaining - sports.
 
The first sport I participated in was soccer. That portion of my life feels like a dream sometimes, but I can remember running around the field as a kindergartener chasing around a little red ball with a big smile. I can recall actually scoring for the other team once because we were winning by so much.
 
I stopped playing soccer after the fifth grade. At that point, I was playing for one of the top teams in the tri-cities area. It wasn't unusual for us to score 14 goals in a game. I was primarily a midfielder, which essentially meant I followed the ball wherever it went, a good outlet for my energy to say the least. Soccer produced some good memories and friends that I stay in touch with to this day.
 
The second sport I took up was swimming. I was always a big fan of being around water or even playing in the rain. My mom took me to swimming lessons when I was just in the first grade.
 
The hardest fear to overcome at a young age was the deep end of the pool. I used to be terrified of the deep end of the swimming pool. My coach tried to help me get over that fear and force me to go all the way from one end of the pool to the other, but as soon as the water deepened I went straight to the side and slowly pushed my way to the finish. Most of the time I did this while crying and shaking.
 
Thankfully, this fear lasted only a couple of months. Once I worked past that, I joined the county swimming team and starting participating in meets. With age my skills improved and soon I was beating all of the local competitors in my age group. At the age of eight, I won a regional competition in North Carolina, where I was still living at the time.
 
When mom and I moved to Bristol, Virginia, I joined a local team in Abingdon called the CAST Sea Tigers. I was no longer swimming with a county team, but a USA team, which sent us all over the East Coast to compete. The competition was much better, which allowed me to set new goals. When I was 11, I made it to the Virginia State Championship, where I finished 11^th in the breaststroke. That year and the ensuing years were the high point of my swimming career.
 
After that, I slowly began to lose interest in competitive swimming, and I quit the team by my sophomore year of high school. I didn't race again until my senior year, when I swam jut to stay in shape. While doing that, I managed to set a few school records that hopefully hold up for a couple more years.
 
Cycling was the next sport I became involved in. Well before I was thought of, my mother was an avid biker and consistently rode at least three days a week. My grandfather helped me grow out of the training wheels phase when I was very young, and before you knew it I was the youngest biker seen riding solo in the western North Carolina mountains.
 
Mountain biking was how it all started. After that it was BMX racing as a second grader. Even though it was fun while it lasted, I didn't live anywhere near a good track, bringing that phase to a close after just two years.
 
Finally I settled on road racing. I got my first road bike as a fourth grader. At that time, I also had swimming practice on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. My mom would have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich ready when I got home from school and I would head to swimming practice. We made the 10-mile journey to swimming practice on our bikes. After the two-hour practice, we got back on our bikes and rode home.
 
The high point of my cycling career was in the fifth and sixth grade. I had joined a local competitive team where we raced all over the East Coast. My first win was in Bloomington, Indiana. It was far and away one of the most rewarding feelings I've ever had, especially doing it in the city where my uncle lived. My greatest accomplishment in competitive cycling, though, was becoming the Tennessee state champion for my age group.
 
Sadly, only a couple of months after that, our team went bankrupt, forcing me to leave the program. After that, I never raced again. Occasionally I will go mountain biking with my family and friends, but I hope to pick it up again as a hobby later in life.
 
It wasn't until the seventh grade that I attended a public high school. That was also the only year I decided to give football a try.
 
With my prior soccer experience, I was mainly a kicker. It turned out to be a huge success and I made every field goal I attempted that season. In middle school, it was rare to see a team with a field-goal kicker. Our team was one of only two locally to have a full-time kicker. That season we finished third in the region thanks to a huge victory over a team that we had lost to twice before by a total of only three points. After that season, though, I knew I would never have the size to be a football player, so I made the decision to go a different route.
 
The fifth sport I took up was cross country and track. The first year I raced competitively was the fifth grade and from the very beginning I was known as the smiling runner. It didn't matter how hard I was running or the temperature outside, I almost always had a smile on my face.
 
I won my very first race by running a 7:15 mile. In fact, I never finished outside of the top three that first year. I ran my personal best mile during my sophomore year with a 5:20 mile in a track meet. In high school, cross country meets are 5,000 meters, which is a little over three miles. My personal best for a cross country meet also happened during my sophomore year when I ran it in 18:15 at nationals. As a team, we finished fourth in that race.
 
I stopped running track after my sophomore season and, sadly, my cross country career came to an end during my senior year due to an emergency appendectomy surgery.
 
My second-favorite sport I played was basketball. When I transferred to the last school I attended in eighth grade, I joined the basketball team to help start the brand new program.
 
The first few years were incredibly hard and sometimes heartbreaking. We were winless through my junior year and within that time lost a couple of games by only one or two points. This only motivated my teammates and I going into my senior season. We weren't about to go through our final season without a win.
 
We actually did pick up our first win that season. We were playing a rival team that had beaten us badly the past few seasons, but they had lost some of their size and speed. Our team rallied in the second half of that game, winning 63-36. It was an amazing and humbling feeling to be a part of the school's first win in the history of the men's basketball program.
 
We finished the year with nine wins, including a victory on senior night. If I had the choice and the ability to play any other collegiate sport, it would have certainly been basketball. 
 
The final sport I picked up and ultimately my favorite was golf. I never gave golf much thought until about six years ago. My mother has worked on a golf course for the past 11 years and I went to a couple of the camps when I was younger, but that was the extent of my involvement in the game.
 
It wasn't until one fateful day as an eighth grader that I decided I might want to play golf at a competitive level. The more I played and practiced, the more I fell in love with the game. My first year of competition was the summer before my freshman year; I finished almost dead last in every tournament. That season and the ones to come taught me many things outside of just golf.
 
The game helped me become more respectful, and it opened up so many more opportunities than I could have ever imagined. During my junior year of high school, I made the decision to chase a dream of playing college golf in hopes of one day playing professionally. After being recruited by a handful of colleges, I decided that Lincoln Memorial University was the place for me to chase that dream, and here I am today.
 
After all of the sports I have played throughout the years, I wouldn't go back and change a thing. I have been blessed to meet so many people and go to so many places doing the things I love. Golf was just the sport that sunk in the most.
 
I am the first person in my family to play competitive golf, which I am very proud of. This game has helped me become a better man on and off the course. It provides life lessons for anyone who plays it. I can get a good lie from a bad shot or a bad lie from a good shot, but in either case I have to use what I've got and keep moving forward. Such is life.
 
My ultimate goal in golf is to not just play professionally, but to help others become successful golfers as well. I want to give back as much as possible to all of those who helped me get where I am today and where I will be at one day.