Dreams, Nightmares, Fairytales: The Untold Struggle of Young Athletes in a World That Doesn’t Wait
There I was, just 8 years old, pressed against two of my best mates, watching the Champions League finals, 2018, Real Madrid against Liverpool. It was three in the morning. It felt like the world had gone elsewhere, leaving only the game and us to bear witness.
We wanted to be pundits and critique their play, but we were awestruck and kept silent, the way children do when they sense something sacred. It was only when Madrid lifted La Decimotercera that I let my whisper slip out.
“I’ll be there one day.”
My friends laughed. I didn’t. I believed it was inevitable.
Fast forward to today. At 15, I have crossed the Pacific from Singapore to Los Angeles for a two-week showcase featuring hundreds of elite teenage footballers. Every player here shares the same ambition: earning a Division I roster spot. On the sidelines, at least fifteen college coaches watch closely, evaluating every sprint, every decision, and every moment that could make or break their respective programmes.
I went into the showcase fully confident, but by the end of the first drill, I was already feeling a bit overwhelmed. I was surrounded by players who were faster, stronger, more physically mature, more polished technically, all working just as hard, if not harder, than I was.
Dreams were simple then. I dreamed, and I wore those dreams proudly. But gradually I began to understand that I was not special for dreaming. I was not alone. And suddenly, on every field I stepped onto, stood a new batch of players, each of whom worked equally hard, dreamt equally big, and believed equally assuredly. If that was true, then what, if anything, made me special?
This self-doubt is quite common for teen athletes around the world, competing in any high-level sport, as I later learned from Dr. Jay-Lee Nair, one of Singapore’s leading Sports Psychologists.
Dr Nair began by explaining to me just how much of sport is lived not on the field, but in the space between expectation and belief. She explained that vision is where it all starts. When athletes are young, the future feels wide open. They can see themselves in it, the bigger picture forms, and that image fuels effort. This increases their drive and makes them feel excited to compete. But as competition intensifies and reality sharpens, that bigger picture begins to blur. Athletes do not stop dreaming, she explained to me. They begin to question if they can achieve it.
In fact, with the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics fast approaching, as we admire the very best competing on the world stage, imagine the countless teenagers who once pictured themselves standing atop the medal podium – but now live with crushed dreams. How can teenagers possibly handle that level of emotional disappointment?
Dr. Nair herself was a former NCAA Division I golfer, which guides her mental-health work with youth athletes and high-performance professionals across Asia.
She told me that one of the most damaging shifts happens when vision turns into expectation. Vision is an ambition, something expansive and motivating. A manifestation. Expectation, on the other hand, demands certainty and punishes uncertainty.
So the thinking must change. Dr Nair told me she asks athletes to turn inward and take stock of what is actually within reach. Not results, but habits. An athlete plagued by such self-doubt can benefit from a simple question: “How well did I manage my reaction to mistakes – and how well did I deal with them today?”
We then addressed another challenge facing young athletes: the tendency to conflate ambition with personal identity. Once this occurs, athletes no longer compete to grow but to protect their sense of worth.
Here, Dr Nair proposed a three-part framework:
In the first column, we have our athlete DNA, or our identity. This, Dr Nair explains, is permanent and evolving. It can include your strengths, skills, abilities, and even your talent. In the third column, we have our ambitions and results. These are defined as temporary and situational. The mistake that too many young athletes make, she explains, is allowing our third column, our results, to determine our first column, our identity. As a result, athletes who faced poor results or failed to reach an ambition ended up unnecessarily degrading their own self-worth and identity. This is where we hear the cliches of “I’m not good enough” or “They are better than me.” To fend off this self-belittling habit, Dr Nair reminds athletes to remember that bad results are temporary, so temporary that it is illogical to drag our identity into outcomes.
Instead, she prompts athletes to do the opposite: to let their athlete DNA drive their ambitions.
We can think of the two columns as different levels in a building. We can easily fall from the third level to the first, leaving with a few broken bones that come with jumping off a building. However, we cannot go from the first level straight to the third. It is imperative that we need a set of stairs, a bridge between the two columns: the process. The process is our key to the third column, the high-performance ingredient for athletes. In a good process, Dr Nair continues, the athlete is focused and always present. On the pitch, the athlete shows positive body language and engages in constructive communication with peers or coaches. A process-driven athlete is decisive yet also able to control his or her emotions. They are competing against their opponents, not comparing. They engage in self-talk, whether that be positive or instructional. Finally, when faced with poor results or outcomes, they react and reflect in a positive manner.
With the process in place, Dr Nair flips the script that forces so many young athletes into irrationality. Instead of playing for your self-worth, which forces us to see competition as a threat to our identity, the process allows us to be well-defined in our ambitions. With good reflection, we are finally able to regain the control that so many of us have lost as we grew.
That early feeling of control on the field, back when we were five, discovering the beautiful game for the first time.
Finally, Dr Nair urges us to trust in the process. Two and a half million registered youth soccer players in the United States alone, and we are owed nothing to succeed. We are not entitled to reach the pedestal, no matter how much we sacrifice. The key is acceptance. Acceptance that we might not eventually reach that goal. And with acceptance, the journey means something more and more special. And before we know it, we will find the certainty that we lost so many years ago.
How?
By trusting the process.
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