Unfiltered Story #18543

I was never the popular kid in school, and I was never that fit either. I joined a Cross Country team, as well as Rowing, which is my main passion. My teammates were not always super nice to me, and one day, I had missed practice in order to make a Rowing team meeting. When I was berated for not showing up to practice, I fired back with “At least my other teammates aren’t dicks!” Afterward, I was pretty upset, until I saw this message posted in our team’s groupchat:

Boys I didn’t think I would need to say this and a lot of you are gonna laugh at me for bringing this up, and I don’t care if you do because that’s a problem in itself. I am totally tired of how disrespectful a lot of you are to each other. I could list some examples but I don’t want to call anybody out or bring attention to them. But for real it’s disgraceful. Even one person on the team today explicitly said how he’d rather be with another group of guys because “his other teammates aren’t dicks.” And I know a lot of you are going to laugh this off and say it’s just joking around but in all honesty, there is more than one person on this team tired of it, and I’m sure more who haven’t spoken up. I brought this up with Ben last night and the truth is, it’s proven that people perform better when they are appreciated and pushed in a positive way by their teammates. Laugh at me all you want but if you want a better shot at beating (Rival School’s Team), this is one step in the right path…

After I saw that, I broke down crying because someone has finally stood up for me. I’m so glad that in a world of darkness, a few bright lights still stand out.