Ever since I was young most of my life has revolved around sports. I've grown up playing them throughout high school and college, and with my dad's profession being a collegiate water polo coach, I can safely say that I am familiar with the high levels of skills and attributes that come with it. With the high levels of athletics come high levels of stress and intensity, which create a great demand for quality leadership. Being a captain during high school football and lacrosse, I became very familiar with the sense of stress and pressure and had to quickly learn the best ways to adapt and overcome these feelings. I found one of the best ways to deal with these as a leader was to give positive affirmations, and reward good performance rather than punishing poor performance. This directly translated to my freshman year at IU when I came to be the captain of my fraternity's Little 500 team. As a full team of freshman, there was a sense of equality throughout the team which was, for the most part, a very positive thing because it allowed my teammates to feel comfortable knowing everyone had an equal say in our team even though I held the name of "captain". In my experience, this is one of the most important qualities of leadership. Allowing everyone on the team to feel comfortable knowing that they have an equal opinion to everyone else no matter the title anyone holds. Without this, there would be no progress due to only one person making decisions for the entire squad. These experiences left me with a deep sense of how well-run teams succeed and those who are poorly managed are susceptible to failure. These experiences are what have made me comfortable in a leadership role and allow me to comfortably say that my leadership skills are my most vital asset.