Many of you may know my sister, Ellen, who graduated from here last year. She told me that she frequently was frustrated when teachers recognized her as "Nathan's sister." Those of you with older brothers and sisters who went to school here may feel the same way, so tonight I am proud to say that I am here this evening as Ellen's older brother!

I barely recognized the school when I saw it this evening. The new library and gymnasium make this a much bigger and nicer place. I still haven't found the nice cafeteria with the hot meals-but I'll keep looking. On the other hand, after 3 years of eating college cafeteria food, I'm not sure that I would want to wish a cafeteria on you. You may just want to stick with bagged lunches and Riviera pizza!

I'm honored to be speaking to all of you tonight, and would like to thank Karen Requa and the Medford Lakes Athletic Booster Club for hosting this event tonight.

I know you would all like to get home and watch at least part of the Flyers game (at least I know I would like to), so I will do my best to be brief.

I have been actively involved in sports for over 15 years. I love playing sports for the exercise, for the teamwork, and for the challenge of competition. Ever since playing on my first soccer team here in Medford Lakes, I have been especially captivated by the game of soccer. I have played on many school and traveling teams, including the team here at Neeta School. Today I am the goalkeeper for my college's varsity team at Swarthmore. Soccer has been a big part of my life up until this point, and much of who I am today is the result of my involvement in athletics.

As an athlete, I have enjoyed a number of successes, including competing in the championship soccer game in my 8th grade year here at Neeta, being named to the All State Soccer Team in my senior year at Shawnee, and after my junior year in college, becoming the first player from Swarthmore College in several years to be named to the All Centennial Conference Soccer Team and to the Regional Academic All American Soccer Team. My soccer career has not been all success, however. To the contrary, I have experienced many disappointments and failures. Believe it or not, my failures or disappointments may have outnumbered my successes. I expect that all of you at some point in your sports careers have experienced disappointments or what you at the time thought were failures. If you have not, you will. While I have always welcomed and enjoyed the successes, time and time again it has been my failures, instead of my successes, that have driven me to succeed, and that have helped me grow as an athlete and as a person.

Several times in my soccer career I have begun the season as the starting goalkeeper only to lose my starting position. The most recent of these happened during my sophomore year at college. Under a new coach, I began the season as the starting goalkeeper, but after playing poorly in a few games and then subsequently separating my shoulder, I lost my starting job to a freshman. Even after recovering from my shoulder injury, I struggled to earn back my starting position. Each and every practice I gave everything I could, but consistently my coach elected to keep me on the bench for games. Obviously, I was very frustrated by my coach's decision to continue starting the freshman goalkeeper over me, especially since we weren't winning and I felt I could help turn things around if I were on the field. I never stopped believing in myself and what I could do on the field to help my team. Ultimately, I was given the opportunity to start several of our final games during my sophomore college season, and I thought I had played well. However, the sweetness of this small success was quickly soured when my coach decided to sideline me for the final match of the season against our rival school, Haverford College.

Following that season, for a short time, I had serious doubts about whether I should continue playing on the college soccer team, especially considering the demands of my astrophysics college major. When weighing the pros and cons of remaining on the team, I asked the advice of several of those closest to me, and more often than not they advised me to quit the team. However, while their arguments were persuasive, I decided that I was unwilling to concede defeat by quitting. If my soccer career was going to end prematurely, my coach would have to cut me from the team, because I refused to let go of the game that I have loved so dearly and for so long without a fight.

In the summer prior to my junior year at college, I trained very hard with the goal of proving my coach wrong and becoming the undisputed best goalkeeper on our team. When he benched me in the previous season, my coach often cited the strengths of my freshman teammate, which just happened to be the weaknesses of my game. I knew that if I was going to succeed in proving to my coach that I was the better candidate for the starting job, I would not only have to improve on the weak areas of my game, but make them the strengths of my game. To make them my strengths, I had to practice constantly.

We often perceive professional athletes as individuals who possess great natural talent and who do not have to practice or work on their game-related skills to be successful. Indeed, there are many good players at the professional level who do not actively work to maintain and improve their game. The great players on the professional level, however, are those who constantly work to improve their game, who make their weaknesses the strengths of their game, and who strive to be the best players they can possibly be. Of course, I am not a professional athlete, and I am not blessed with great natural talent. I have always had to work very hard to succeed. Yes, I was a good goalkeeper in high school and in my sophomore year in college, but I was by no stretch of the imagination a great goalkeeper. I knew that in order move more toward the great class of athlete and thereby win back my starting position in college, I would have to work harder than I had ever worked before. And that is what I did.

Last summer, I worked on my game a little bit each day, and when soccer pre-season arrived, I was the best goalkeeper I had ever been. Much better than when I was an All State goalkeeper selection at Shawnee. Much better than I had been in my first two years of college. As a result, this past season, in my junior year at Swarthmore, I won back my starting job during preseason, and helped lead my team to more conference wins than we had in the last five years combined, including a shutout victory against John's Hopkins University, which was ranked 13th in the nation at the time. Following the season, I was honored with selections to the All-Conference Team, the Regional Academic All-American Team, and the team MVP award. I was also selected by my teammates to be one of the Captains of the team. By far, this past season was the most successful I have had in my entire life.

I tell you this story not to parade my own accomplishments, but to demonstrate that it is possible to rebound from the low points in your athletic career and in your life. In fact, these low points are what should drive us to succeed. As the great Michael Jordan once said,

I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot and I missed. I have failed over and over again in my life - and that's precisely why I succeed.

Certainly, you are never guaranteed success in sports or in life. Even if you approach the game with the attitude of being the best player you can be, you may never win any awards or championships. In fact, most of you never will. However, I can promise you that if you approach athletics and life in this way, you will grow both as an athlete and a person. I can promise that if you never compromise your dedication to improve your play and yourself, you will never have any regrets. I can promise that if you refuse to accept defeat by quitting, you will go through life knowing that if something does not work out it wasn't because you didn't try hard enough. Finally, I can promise that if your resolve is unwavering in the face of failure, you will enjoy the most satisfying career and life possible. Now, I challenge you to go out into the world and live out the promise, and become the best athletes, no, the best people you can be.

Thank you for letting me be with you here this evening.