Isn’t It Supposed to Be Fun?

By: Reid Meyer

I wasn’t the greatest student in high school. In fact, I was sent to a private school in my hometown because my parents were nervous I’d do the bare minimum to pass my classes in our local public high school. The worst part of that whole situation? They were absolutely right. I was much more interested in playing sports throughout my high school career, and I would famously forget to do my homework on the days it might conflict with any athletic commitment.

I played as many sports as I could growing up. As I got older, it became evident that I had a particular talent for baseball. I was tall, left-handed, and incredibly scared of contact sports. I got to practice my pitching in the fall when everyone else in Texas was playing football. I made the varsity roster my freshman year. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was already getting recruitment letters from colleges around the country. 

The remainder of my high school baseball career continued to trend upward as I broke school records, won every award offered in my school’s conference, and continued to get college attention both through my high school and club baseball team. My name was synonymous with baseball at my school, and the majority of my weekends were filled with invitational camps and college visits.

Ultimately, I ended up signing my National Letter of Intent with Texas Tech University, accepting a generous athletic scholarship at a Power 5 Big XII program. It was an opportunity that most high school baseball players only dream about, and here I am living that dream.

End of story, right? I'm awesome, I got a baseball scholarship, and now my life is complete! That would be great and so much easier, but that's not where this story ends.

In fact, by the end of my college career, I will have attended four schools in three and a half years, quit baseball halfway through, and be diagnosed with both depression and body dysmorphia after just one semester in college. So let's revisit my high school timeline to see how I got there.

When I started getting attention for my ability on the baseball field, my environment shifted. My identity began to morph from just Reid Meyer to Reid Meyer, the baseball player. My athletic achievements started to dominate more and more of the conversation around me. By the time I started getting college letters sophomore year, my identity was fully defined by my contribution to my sport.

In a way, it was incredibly exciting because I discovered this thing I was good at. Everyone wants to have a talent, and mine just so happened to be in a sport that my community cared about. The more success I had, the more attention I got. Whether it was coaches, peers, parents, or the overall community, it was an incredibly powerful motivator for a fourteen year-old boy. 

The validation I got from baseball was like a drug, and it quickly became a top priority in my life. As my personal investment in the sport grew, so did the investment of the people who supported me. 

My parents knew I wanted to play baseball at the next level, so they began paying for lessons and signing me up for more competitive and financially demanding teams. They did everything they could think of to put me in a position to succeed. Not a day goes by that I am not appreciative of that support, but at that age, it also created an expectation in my head that I needed to provide a payoff for the investment that my parents were making in me.

For those of you who'd like to check the scoreboard, I am a white man attending a private high school in Texas with parents who are willing and able to financially invest in my sport aspirations. If this was a video game, one could argue that I started my journey in the easiest possible setting.

With that background in mind, let’s continue to revisit my high school experience. I went to a private school in my hometown and never took advantage of the resources available to me because they didn’t have anything to do with sports. I was much more interested in playing baseball throughout my high school career. I would frequently choose to put my athletics over my academics because I was convinced that my value was measured on a baseball field, not in a classroom.

I missed volleyball tournaments with my friends because there were baseball practices on the weekends. I didn’t play basketball because I could injure myself before baseball season. As I mentioned, I made the varsity roster my freshman year but barely cracked a smile because anything less would have felt like a failure. 

When I was a sophomore in high school, I got my first personalized recruiting letter from Virginia Tech University. Then I spent the next few months mailing out dozens of personalized packets to higher-ranked Division I schools. I viewed the letter as a baseline, not an achievement.

The remainder of my high school career continued to be dominated by baseball. I missed friends' birthday parties, skipped meetings with my high school's college counselors, and traveled to what felt like every showcase camp within a 500-mile radius of my house. I felt that my only unique identifier amongst peers was baseball, and my interests outside of the sport were put in a mental box out of sight. 

In August of my senior year, my plan to attend an Ivy League school blew up in my face when Dartmouth College could no longer honor my verbal commitment. I didn’t prioritize my academics enough in high school, so they were unable to recommend me to the admissions office. I assumed my athletic ability would supersede the need for great grades, but I was wrong. 

Struggling with rejection, I committed to Weatherford Junior College because it was close to home, and the coach I had been working with for years was now their pitching coach. That said, I still attended several showcase camps in the fall of senior year in a desperate attempt to catch the attention of another Division I program.

After a strong showing in an Arizona camp, I signed with Texas Tech University on the very last day of the early signing period, roughly three days after my official visit, despite not enjoying my time in Lubbock. They were offering a generous athletic scholarship at a Big XII program. It was an opportunity that most high school baseball players only dream about, so I felt like it was expected of me to accept. 

To this day, I still remember sitting in the coaches’ office at Weatherford Junior College with tears in my eyes, telling my coach that I had to retract my commitment to Weatherford because I was going to sign with Texas Tech. 

Everyone in that room knew I didn’t want to go to Texas Tech. My value was attached to my athletic achievement over the last four years. NCAA Division I baseball was considered the pinnacle of college athletics. If I had an opportunity to reach the top, why wouldn’t I? 

Same timeline, different perspectives. If you only focus on athletics, I navigated high school quite expertly. However, once you start to broaden the scope and look at my overall experience, it paints a completely different picture.

Fast forward to the start of my freshman year in college. My mother dropped me off in Lubbock, Texas, and I didn’t even know what my college major was. I was assigned something over the summer during orientation, but the only thing that seemed to matter was whether or not it would conflict with baseball practice. 

We called this "majoring in eligibility." I later found out that I was an exercise science major, specifically in a program designed to send kids to physical therapy school. It was not the most logical major for someone who passes out when they see injuries. 

Fall training began the day before classes started, and my undergraduate career felt like a whirlwind from day one. Coming from a small school in Texas, I was always “the guy” on any team I played for. When I got to Texas Tech, I became “just some guy” instead. 

As someone who valued themselves based on athletics, that was extremely hard to handle. Mentally, I felt like I was underperforming because I wasn't the top athlete for every drill. My response was to put more time into my sport so that I could compete with the rest of my team. 

While competition is traditionally healthy, I created an unhealthy balance for myself. By the time I went home for winter break, I had lost roughly 60 pounds in four months. I entered Texas Tech at 6'4, 195 pounds, so I didn’t have sixty pounds to lose. 

My sister pulled me aside when I visited home over Winter break and basically forced me to dial a psychiatrist before leaving her sight. After some sessions over winter break, I was diagnosed with depression and body dysmorphia and began taking Lexapro. 

During the spring season, I finally realized that the athletic side of my college experience was not satisfying whatsoever. I was constantly disappointed in myself for my performance. I was constantly anxious about practice, games, and everything in between. I didn’t feel like my existence was contributing to the team whatsoever. After two cumulative innings in four appearances over the course of my freshman season, I called my mother on the way home from Lubbock and told her I was transferring schools. 

I didn’t want to lose a year of eligibility. However, I felt like I needed to go somewhere familiar in order to get some of my mojo back. And that’s what I did. I ended up walking on at Weatherford Junior College my sophomore year. In my mind, this was a steppingstone to getting back into the Division I cycle, but it ended up being the final resting place of my competitive baseball career.

The fall season, which happens at the junior college level, was incredibly successful for me. I was easily one of the top pitchers on the team. I felt like I had true value again for the first time since my senior year of high school. I was riding high, taking official visits to different colleges again. By the time we got to Winter Break, I had multiple competitive scholarship offers from several Division I schools. 

In an effort to avoid another Texas Tech situation, I approached my visits differently this time. Instead of focusing on just athletics, I would listen to my gut more than usual as I toured the campus, spoke with coaches, and met other players on the team. 

However, as I toured colleges and spoke with coaches, I realized I began to care less and less about the baseball part of the trip. Topics that used to occupy the entirety of my brain in high school were struggling to keep my attention. 

I found myself much more interested in the campus, the classrooms, and opportunities outside of baseball. I didn’t know it at the time, but Texas Tech had pulled the curtain back on college athletics. I didn’t value that part of my college experience the same way I used to.

I decided to delay my commitment until the spring semester, and that would prove to be one of the smarter decisions of my college career. Weatherford struggled early in the season. After a few tough weekends, our head coach met with players individually. He wanted to know where our priorities were in the spring, and he seemed convinced that we had to choose between school and sport. 

Under normal circumstances, I would have said sport whether or not I believed it because we all know what a coach wants to hear. I didn't do that. I told him that I loved baseball, but I wasn't going to be a professional player, so I needed to focus on my academics just as much as I did the baseball season. After that meeting, I didn't pitch another inning until our sophomore night. From being one of the most highly recruited players in the fall to sitting the entirety of the season in the spring, that was the final sign I needed to see.

Halfway through the spring season, I contacted every coach who offered me a scholarship, and I told them all the same thing—I'm done playing college baseball. Some were confused, some didn't care, and some thought I was lying. 

At first, this decision haunted me. I felt like I had wasted everyone's time with my college baseball career. For a while, I even contemplated killing myself because I couldn't see my personal value beyond sports. At the time, it felt easier to end things on my own terms instead of having to admit to everyone that I didn't live up to my athletic expectations. I had already written letters to members of my family, and was saved by the fact that I was going to see my parents the following weekend. I convinced myself to hold off until I spoke with them, knowing I had a more permanent option still available to me if things didn’t go well.

I expected to feel a pain in my chest after the last phone call since I effectively ended my own baseball career, but I just felt relief. I knew I would miss playing my sport on a competitive level, but my relationship with baseball had become so toxic over the last two years that I knew stepping away was the right decision.

Telling my parents was tougher. I’m convinced they thought I was joking at first. Then they were convinced it was just a fleeting feeling that would pass over the course of a few days. I had to tell them that it had been on my mind for the past several months, and the amount of relief I felt after those phone calls only validated my emotions. 

I remember the main source of my fear when talking to my parents stemmed from the idea that they would be disappointed in me. I could already hear them reminding me how much they spent over the course of my childhood, the number of weekends they sacrificed for me to play a tournament in the middle of nowhere. It felt fair to me.

My parents didn’t mention it once in our entire conversation. They wanted to know that the decision I was making was with a clear head, and they wanted to know that the decision made me happy. That was it. I know that not every family would respond the same way, but I’m eternally grateful that my parents supported me through that decision.

Now it was time to pick a school without the influence of athletics. Baseball had always been my crutch for making decisions, and so far, it had sent me to two different schools in less than two years. I visited colleges to see friends this time, not coaches. Ultimately, I decided to attend the University of Texas. I had to take a few classes at Austin Community College to graduate on time, which is how we get to our fourth college in under four years.

My first semester at UT had to be the most transformative during the duration of my entire college career. For the first time since early high school, I was no longer Reid, the baseball player, and I had forgotten how to be just Reid. 

Athlete re-identification is a real struggle, no matter when it hits you. Trying to re-establish who I was while adjusting to a new environment in Austin was something I was not at all prepared for. It took time, therapy, and a lot of trial and error before I felt like I was standing on solid ground again. 

While I may have stepped away from baseball, many of my tendencies are still rooted in sports. As I was completing my final semester of college, I found it impossible not to reflect on my college experience as a whole. 

At first, there was a lot of frustration in that process because I would look back and sulk about how disjointed my college experience was. All of my full-time student friends had a great college experience, building relationships that would continue after college. They had a clear idea of what their next steps were going to be after college. As I sat in my one-bedroom apartment filling out applications for baseball facilities in my hometown so I could live at home and avoid paying rent, I couldn’t help but feel cheated out of the true college experience. 

The more I thought about it, the more I started to see my situation as a puzzle to solve. Where did it go wrong? Were there warnings that I missed? How could I have improved my college experience? I started writing down questions on note cards and pinning the notes to my wall. 

After a few days, I had filled the entire kitchen wall with note cards and was convinced that I was not getting my security deposit back. I started to go through each card one by one, and for each question, I would do my best to answer it as objectively as possible, given my own experiences. 

This process was better than any medicine I was ever prescribed. At first, I only answered the questions based on my own experiences. Soon after, I started researching the topics to see if I could add some empirical evidence to my resolutions. 

Lastly, I started to reach out to my other student-athlete friends. Despite my effort to network as a full-time student, the vast majority of my friends were still student-athletes actively competing in college athletics. I was amazed and sometimes relieved to discover that every question I had asked myself had been asked by at least two other people I knew. In fact, I added to my wall of questions after talking to each of my friends because they had questions that I hadn't thought of initially. 

All in all, I discovered that my story was far from the exception and—in fact—is much closer to the rule. While no athlete’s experience is the same, there are certainly common themes amongst almost all college athletes today. I realized that most of these problems could be mitigated or managed in a healthy way by educating and empowering student-athletes at the high school level about common issues and pitfalls we’re well aware of within that student demographic.

What started as note cards on a kitchen wall eventually grew into my company, Athletes to Athletes. The business wasn’t profitable right away, nor was it even a real business, but I knew I had unlocked a purpose in my life that wouldn’t go away. 

My passion is helping athletes navigate the college selection process infinitely better than I ever did. I knew there was a way to do it through education and mentorship.

My college experience didn't go the way I planned. In fact, it went about as far from the plan as humanly possible. If you look at my experience in a vacuum, many would claim that it was more failure than success, and I can't entirely disagree with them. That said, the culmination of my experience created an opportunity for me to discover a passion.

Most would consider my early exit from baseball an unfortunate result. I’ve come to see it as one of the luckiest moments of my life because it freed me from choosing the next school entirely on athletics. It also opened my eyes to the opportunity to help the next generation of student-athletes avoid the same mistakes we made. 

Life experiences, both good and bad, can be your most powerful asset when it comes to creating a business. I would strongly encourage you to view them as opportunities rather than obstacles. 

About Reid 

Reid Meyer is the co-founder and CEO of Athletes to Athletes, a college counseling company for high school student-athletes. As a standout pitcher in high school, Reid attended Texas Tech University as a member of the baseball team. 

After a tumultuous playing career in college, he ultimately earned his undergraduate degree and master's degree from the University of Texas. Before launching his own business, he worked for a sports streaming startup, FloSports. 

Reid has a passion for helping student-athletes, and his company aims to help that population make holistic college decisions that satisfy them academically, athletically, personally, and financially. Reid is a member of TACAC, NACAC, NCAG, IECA, and a graduate of the Independent Educational Consulting program at UC Irvine.