Eyes On Me Narrative

On my way to the competition, as I always have, I inserted my earbuds into my ears and watched as our car passed hundreds of trees. Every gymnastics meet created such a sickening feeling in my stomach and made my head spin. My father asked if I felt alright. I lied and told him I felt fine. I jokingly said that I only imagined myself at the top of the podium; a first place medal around my neck. My parents tried to encourage me to accomplish this. Therefore, they promised a stuffed animal and an ice cream cone if I won. I made a half-smile because I doubted myself too much. If only I knew what would soon happen to permanently change myself as a gymnast. When I arrived, all of my teammates crowded around me and pulled me into the gymnasium. Because we were competing at our ‘home meet’, a gymnastics competition at my team’s gymnasium, I felt more comfortable. After warm-up, I went to vault. I did not feel pleased with my score, but

Hi, there first name is Christina, last name is Cepeda. It's a pleasure to finally meet you! You should know that the only reason you were able to recognize me is because I am 5 feet, 7 inches tall, not skinny, more on the average side (I'd like to think). I have long naturally curly hair, somedays it's flat ironed straight or up in a bun but on this particular day, the hair will definitely be straight, face full of make-up, and I will be wearing glasses because I have to look my best and nicely dressed, when I first meet you!

I started wrestling in sixth grade. Even though I didn’t win one of my first seven matches, I developed into a successful wrestler. In high school I won tournaments and beat high-quality wrestlers. During my junior year I was determined to become a great wrestler. I worked harder than ever and didn’t let anyone stop me. That year I lost the Illinois state wrestling tournament championship match by one point. Over the next six months between my junior and senior season I was runner up at AAU national tournament and wrestled at Disney Land in Florida at the Disney Duals with over 50 other teams and only lost 1 of 8 matches. These are a few of my achievements in high school. Now that I am in college there are many

Imagine working, traing your whole life to finally get to that 1 fight. Imagine getting to that one night, fight night.. Image winning that fight that you have trained for your whole life. Then imagine getting your title stripped away. I was punished for what I believed in. I was on the top of the world, I was the athlete of century, but that all changed in the blink of and eye.

Admittedly I’m not the best wrestler, but my hard work ethic and determination is what makes me exceptional. At the 2015 regionals I lost my first match of the tournament which really brought my spirits down quite a lot. Going into my second match I knew if I lost my season would be done, and sectionals would be out of question for me. I ran out onto the mat, my heart is pounding through my chest. I didn’t want to let my parents and coaches down again. The match started and instinctively I grabbed my opponent’s leg and pinned him in 23 seconds. Winning this match put me into the finals for third place. When I ran onto the match for the finals match my heart dropped when I saw the guy who beat me come out to wrestle me. This meant I had to wrestle the guy that beat me to get into sectionals. The match started and he took me down, so I

The first time competing against him was in the finals of the team regional qualifiers for the state tournament, and I had lost in three minutes and thirty seconds. The second time I faced him was for the team state invitational championship. When the match began I could feel the pressure and had one of the worst wrestling matches ever. After I lost that match in forty seconds, I knew I had let my teammates and coaches down. When this humiliating defeat was over, I told myself that I would not let my teammates or coaches down ever again and that I would reach my full potential as a wrestler. The week leading up to the third match I communicated with my coaches about what

This year, I decided to join the wrestling team. I am a very unskilled wrestler. I’m not saying this to tear myself, it’s just true. However, I do love the sport, and would like to continue wrestling throughout High School. When I first joined, I was unable to take down a single boy on my team. Not even a single one. By the end of the season, the boy who I had been unable to pin once the first month I was able to pin half the times we wrestled by that last month. This was a lesson in hard work, and the fact that I am able to beat up boys (and girls). Those two things have given me lots of

I began wrestling since my freshman year of high school, as I have always wanted to wrestle. I did not necessarily at the sport, but I enjoyed it. I earned medals and won tournaments, and for a time I even saw myself wrestling in college. I thought that I had my future planned until I dislocated my knee. I first viewed the incident as a freak accident, but it soon happened frequently. It reached to the point where I required invasive surgery. Mulling over my surgery and repeated injuries, I concluded that wrestling became too dangerous. But I committed myself to wrestling; I had no idea what else to do. Desperate to find an activity to fill the void that athletics left behind, I decided to try something outside of my comfort zone. As a result,

The Truth about wrestling is that it's tougher than it looks for sure. I’ve been doing to for about three years now and well it's been the best thing to happen to me. When you're a freshman in high school coming out of a failed football season. And your friends talking you into doing wrestling. Well I was hooked by the awesome time and funny atmosphere back in freshman the team was fun and the seniors were even better. Out of the three captains Jamie, Mike, Brody. Jamie and Brody were the best and they knew just about every move their was. I will always look back to my freshman year in wrestling because there hasn't been a year like it since. Though it was tough always going out there and wrestling a senior or Junior, I never really care about

As I entered my freshman year of year high school, I was very nervous, yet excited to begin deciding my path in life, such as where I wanted to go to college or what job I wanted when I was an adult. At this point, I had some staple skills established, but nothing like I currently have. The year that I decided to try out for the wrestling team, my older brother was a junior at the time and he influenced me to join and said that it was a really fun sport that would help me to grow both physically and mentally.While I hesitated at first, I eventually decided that I would give it a shot. That decision was one of the best decisions I have yet to made. The first practice came, and at the time, it was one of the most

The sport of wrestling has been going on for thousands of years. Our earliest ancestors have been known to play the sport. Back in the caveman times in France the drawings have showed us two men grappling and fighting (College Sports). This is showing the two men wrestling. Wrestling to me has been the toughest sport I have had to participate in so far in my athletic career.

I love the adrenaline rush and when the ref raised my arm up high when I won a match. I loved being able to do a sport I was great at for once. I was quick, knew a lot of moves, and knew how the wrestling worked. I just always hated the nervous feelings I always got before a meet. My nerves would make my stomach feel upside down and cause me to think twice about wrestling just in case I ever got hurt. But Like I said before this meet was different. Ten minutes after my successful match I was feeling overconfident and didn’t have that nervous feeling I had at the beginning of the meet since I had won a match so quick. I was called to be next for my second match that night and still was feeling way too confident. I never should have thought my match was going to be as easy as my last. Once my strap was on and shook hands with the other wrestler right before the whistle blew I was pulling moves like crazy. The different wrestling moves I used worked many times but the other guy, oh no. He was good. He knew how to defend himself from me and tried to get me mad by always pulling on my head down. That was irritating to me because I chipped one of my front teeth. So in my mind after about 2 rounds with this guy, I told myself I needed to finish him and win like I did the last match. Yet again, I still had that overconfidence in me. I tried to bring him down which almost worked, but he aimed for my ankles and pulled me up. I didn’t want to go down so

After Freshman year of highschool I started to slowly drop sport after to sport to help me gain time in the off season to make up for all the lost time in previous years. By doing so this helped me engage in more hours of off season workouts and tournaments. While doing so I very slowly started to realize that if I continued working hard and persevering through harder practices and harder workouts, that it wasn't too late to catch my opponents. That i would be able to be better than my opponents not only in skill level, but overall shape and conditioning. That wrestling was not about being the strongest, or most athletic in the room.

As a member of the wrestling team, I developed the physical toughness to become a member of the U.S. armed services. There, I learned what hard work was. After running as a team for miles on end, we moved to the mats to work on individual technique. We wrestled and struggled till we couldn't move. It was more about outlasting the other guy for six minutes straight in a true match, therefore the guy most in shape won. When the coach

My freshman and sophomore year of high school I went to Liberty where I decided I was going to try out for the wrestling team, from there on I only lost eleven matches out of sixty one matches I would end up winning districts both years. Our wrestling team had head coaches that had a culture of winning and competing, as well as having State Champions wrestlers who truly loved wrestling. Then junior year came and I was forced to change schools to attend Independence where I had no one to practice with, plus having a brand new head coach, which had been given only three wrestlers and the rest students that have never wrestled before causing limits on the amount of wrestling concepts that are learned so in result practice ends up being a