When my daughter was born, I immediately thought of sports she could play. I'd tell my wife made-up stories of her representing the U.S. at the World Cup. I'd make up stories of her success as a left-hand pitcher in the recently created professional women's baseball league. Sometimes the dream would reach winning a gold medal as the starting point guard for Team USA.
The fantasies revolved around a popular sport in the U.S. and success outside the sports culture in the States never crossed my mind, until I read about Truly Adams.
For teenagers in America, four of the top five most popular sports involve a ball. Whether it's a basketball, a football, a soccer ball or a baseball, there's some sort of round sphere involved in the game.
Adams isn't your average American teenager. His weapon of choice is a car, and his race track has made him a two-time World Karting Champion — the first American to reach the finals and earn a podium finish in France's FEED Racing Volant F4 program.
He tried to play ball like the average teenager. Adams played soccer. He dribbled the ball up the court in basketball. He even picked up a racket a few times on the tennis court. But nothing overtook the infatuation he had developed for racing.
Adams truly made me believe that my daughter doesn't need to stick to any of the ball-related sports to find success. As long as she dreams big, stays focused and loves what she is doing, it doesn't matter what success looks like. It's a lesson the racecar driver learned from playing other sports.
"If you're a fast driver, I don't think anyone cares as long as you're fast and you have money to do it," he said.
"Every sport takes a very hard discipline and work ethic. You have to do a lot of training off and on the track to get your body and mind prepared to go out there and do the best you can," he added.
Success for my daughter can come disguised as a $50,000 sponsorship, like the one Adams recently received from Native Racing, a Native American-owned, family-operated motorsports team founded by Larry Hernandez Jr., a tribal member of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.
"Representing Riverside is amazing. I've got a lot of sponsor opportunities…they've helped me a lot and helped my family a lot in the racing industry," Adams said.
Popularity within a sport that's unknown to the masses in the U.S. does come with attached misconceptions. Adams' life may seem luxurious — from traveling around Europe to being on board a private yacht — but what people don't understand is it's all part of the game.
"I'm always on a plane, I'm always at an Airbnb, a hotel, I'm never really home…it gets tiring," Adams said.
This is where the work off the track will come in handy. If my daughter wants to find success as a gymnast, if she wants to become a tennis star, or win grand slams around the world in pickleball, it takes mental toughness to fully embrace the success, even if no one understands the sport.
What Adams has demonstrated is that if I want my daughter to find success in an unpopular sport, she needs to believe in the dream and have the right support around her.
Let's just hope she likes sports.
