Making the most of a bad situation: my COVID story about resilience.

At Greater Every Day, our fifth core value is resilience. We define it as the ability to respond to adversity, adapt when circumstances change, and continue moving forward when the original plan is no longer an option.

We want our athletes to develop resilience at a young age through lacrosse because adversity is inevitable, and learning how to respond to it can shape success far beyond the field. Seasons end. Teams lose. Injuries happen. Roles change. Plans fall apart. Eventually, every athlete will face a moment when effort alone cannot change the situation in front of them.

What matters then is how you respond.

Long before Greater Every Day existed, the COVID-19 pandemic gave me one of my first real lessons in that kind of resilience.

The pandemic was chaotic for everyone. Beyond its devastating impact on public health, the shutdown disrupted careers, education, sports, relationships, and plans people had spent years building toward.

This is the story of how an unexpected ending forced me to adapt, reconsider the plan, and find a different path forward.

Like so many people, I remember how quickly the world seemed to change. Six games into my senior season at Washington College, our lacrosse season was shut down. We had struggled early with a young roster but were beginning to improve at exactly the right time as conference play approached.

Then, during a Wednesday team meeting, it was over.

More than 15 years of competitive lacrosse—years spent developing skills, athleticism, discipline, IQ, toughness, and leadership—came to an abrupt end. There was no final game, no Senior Day, no graduation ceremony, and little sense of closure to my college experience or athletic career.

The next few months were spent finishing school from my parents' house and trying to determine what came next.

Like many college athletes approaching the end of their playing careers, so much of my time and energy had been devoted to lacrosse that answering a simple question from family—“What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”—was surprisingly difficult.

While staying at a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I submitted my undergraduate dissertation. After clicking “Submit,” there was a brief feeling of accomplishment, followed almost immediately by another thought:

So now what?

A Business Management degree offered plenty of possibilities but no obvious path forward. Lacrosse had been my primary focus, and I had only recently started seriously looking for jobs when companies began freezing hiring in response to the pandemic. Some classmates who already had positions lined up even saw their offers rescinded as businesses prepared for an uncertain future.

The job market offered little certainty, while the abrupt ending of an athletic career still felt unresolved.

A few different paths emerged.

Option 1: Use the extra year of NCAA eligibility.

The NCAA granted spring 2020 athletes another year of eligibility. After four years as a starter and serving as a team captain, the opportunity to take a shot at Division I lacrosse was appealing.

But where would that opportunity be? Would there even be a season the following spring? With thousands of athletes suddenly receiving another year of eligibility, there was also the possibility of simply getting lost in the shuffle.

Option 2: Take a shot at Division I football.

Football had always been another passion, and playing at the Division I level had been a long-standing dream. I was never big enough coming out of high school to attract serious recruiting attention, but four years of college lacrosse had changed the physical equation. Graduate school at a major university combined with trying to walk onto the football team suddenly seemed possible.

But the reality raised difficult questions. Was becoming the 60th player on a roster and risking long-term injury worth one uncertain season? And was pursuing that opportunity worth spending well over $100,000 on a master's degree?

Option 3: Start working.

The previous summer, I had worked for a merchandising company in New York City. Returning to help with deliveries was a realistic option. Delivery driving was not exactly the career I had envisioned after college, but it meant joining a small business, earning an income, and returning to New York after years away from some of my closest friends. Still, moving to New York City in the middle of a pandemic brought its own uncertainty.

Then another opportunity appeared.

Before the pandemic shut everything down, my cousin had been studying at Newcastle University in England. A former Division I lacrosse player himself, he had become interested in writing and discovered a program that recruits North American collegiate athletes to universities in the United Kingdom. Athletes could continue competing while pursuing graduate degrees and, in some cases, receive scholarship assistance.

Through that connection, I was recruited to Durham University.

Durham offered the chance to continue competing while earning a Master's Degree in International Business Management from one of the world's leading universities. The program lasted one year rather than the two years common to many U.S. master's programs, and with the scholarship money offered, the total cost came in below $40,000—a fraction of the price of some comparable American graduate programs.

Looking back, spending that year abroad was one of the best decisions I could have made.

Getting there was not particularly easy. Applying for a passport and visa during a global pandemic created enough challenges on its own. Having to replace the passport after my dog ate the first one made the process considerably more memorable.

But every headache was worth it.

During that year, I:

Won a BUCS National Championship in men's lacrosse

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Played football again for the first time since High School

Traveled throughout the United Kingdom, including London, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Nottingham, and Leeds

Skied—and enjoyed après-ski—in the French Alps

Played football against the Vikings in Reykjavík

Drank Guinness in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day

Won a Student Fight Night boxing match

Made incredible new friends from around the world

Learned how to live thousands of miles from home independently

Developed a greater appreciation for different cultures, especially their foods

Earned a master's degree from a world-class university

Took a graduation trip with my parents to Barcelona

Returned home and began my professional career with a medical device company.

(which included a 3-day, solo cross-country drive to San Diego)

None of those experiences would have happened without the decision to keep moving when the original plan disappeared.

That period gave me lasting confidence in my ability to navigate uncertainty. When my senior season ended, something I had spent most of my life working toward seemed to disappear overnight. There was no perfectly mapped-out Plan B. There were questions about career direction, identity outside of sports, and what the next chapter should look like.

Going to England did not eliminate that uncertainty.

It taught me how to move through it.

The COVID-19 pandemic was an incredibly difficult period for millions of people, and the loss and hardship it caused should never be minimized. But within my own circumstances, it reinforced a lesson that has stayed with me ever since and now sits at the heart of what we try to teach through Greater Every Day:

You can't always control what happens to you. You can control what you do next.

Adversity is inevitable—in sports and in life. Resilience means refusing to let a setback determine what comes next. It means adapting, finding another path, and continuing to move forward even when the path looks very different from the one originally planned.

Sometimes the opportunity you never expected becomes the experience that changes your life.