Personal Narrative-Integrity

Yet my apprehension prevailed as I continued to fear getting put in the game in case another player was injured. I was still afraid of making mistakes and getting blamed by screaming coaches and angry teammates. Sometimes these fears came true. During my sophomore season, my position led me to play in the varsity games on many occasions. On such occasions, I often made mistakes. Most of the time the mistakes were not significant; they rarely changed the outcome of a play. Yet I received a thorough verbal lashing at practice for the mistakes I had made. These occurrences only compounded my fears of playing. However, I did not always make mistakes. Sometimes I made great plays, for which I was congratulated. Now, as I dawn on my senior year of soccer, I feel like a changed person.

I have lived in only one location my entire life: Edwardsville, Illinois. A peripheral suburb of St. Louis, it stands as the rare oasis of people in a desert of corn, pinned in its own personal bubble. Due to this blend of time and isolation, I developed a natural familiarity with my hometown. But, throughout my childhood, I longed to break free from the confines of the bubble and venture outward. However, this changed last summer, as I walked through Richards Brickyard, our family heirloom, that my great-grandfather, Benjamin Richards, founded over 120 years ago. I felt these childlike sentiments slip away. The bubble that had surrounded me for so long began to vanish, and the picture that it had been obscuring was slowly revealed.

“When your legs can’t run anymore, run with your heart.” Spring is the best time of the year, because it is soccer season. Spring of 2016 was a special time to me, because I was a freshman at Wahlert Catholic High School trying out for the women’s soccer team. I went into the first open gym scared, nervous and excited all at the same. The open gyms were for use to get in shape for the actual season and for the coaches to get a better look at our soccer skills. Previously in the year of 2014 I played for a club soccer team called DSC or Dubuque Soccer Club. After that 2014 season was over I decided to quite DSC and try something different. So going into open gyms I knew that I was going to be a just a bit rusty because I haven’t played soccer in a while. As open gyms went on some upperclassman were telling me that the coach was very impressed by the skills I had. Being only a freshman it was very flattering to know that the coach thought that about me. Knowing this it drove me to keep pushing myself hard and hard, because my goal was to make it on varsity.

Everyone on earth is defined by their core beliefs. It’s what makes us all individuals, what separates us from the others. It wasn’t until I was talking with my friend Sean in 8th grade that I started to realize that one of my core beliefs, something I was taught growing up, may not be my own belief.

On 10/02/2017 at 0017 hours, units were dispatched to 627 Central Ave for a report of a Domestic involving a knife. I responded at emergency speed, priority one. Upon my arrival, I located the accused female in the bathroom.

Sports have always been a major part of my life. Since the beginning, I have always been involved in some type of sport. I am the middle child of two boys, so i wasn’t exactly “girly”, I was mainly considered a “tomboy.” I tried gymnastics, but it just wasn’t my thing, I stuck to a bat and a ball. Growing up there wasn’t a time when you wouldn’t find my brothers and I, or my dad and I outside throwing pitch. We all played baseball/softball, so it was kinda our thing just to go out and play a game of wiffle ball.

Joining a new club soccer team coupled with almost daily workouts allowed me to improve my skills in the offseason. The feeling of going into tryouts being so prepared allowed a new level of confidence to emerge in myself. With only two starting spots open, working hard from the very start was necessary in order for me to prove myself to coach. After making the team again, I knew giving my best effort couldn’t end here. I showed up to practices with a positive attitude, always ready to work hard. When the preseason scrimmages, long practices, and exhausting fitness checks were over, the feeling of having earned a starting spot was incredibly satisfying. Now, not only am I working hard to keep up my starting spot, but I am hoping my attitude will rub off on everyone and make the team stronger. Afterall, soccer is a team sport; and the possibility of winning a state title in the near future adds to my ambition to perform well for my teammates every time I step on the field.

I grew up in rural Indiana with three brothers. Our family was a little different than most because all of us children had been adopted. The oldest of us, Andy, was two years older and had cystic fibrosis which meant he probably wouldn’t live to be 30 or more. The remaining three of us were biologically brothers. Triplets in fact. Our parents adopted all three of us together for some brave reason. I used to joke that there was a buy one get two free sale at the adoption agency and that I was the only one they actually wanted. It was never hidden from us that we were adopted, but it always left me feeling that I didn’t quite belong in certain family functions. I wanted to feel like I belonged in my environment. The military

It was morning of the first game in my high school varsity career. The coach had told me the day before that I was not just going to play varsity, but I was going to start for my team. I was exhilarated when I found out, but now as I put on my jersey, I felt the anxiety build up inside of me like a balloon about to burst any second. I put on the rest of my soccer equipment, placing the left sock on my foot before putting on the right one, a ritual I always

Virginia is a 53 year-old, heterosexual, African American female. Virginia has a long history of using crack cocaine. However, she has been clean of drugs for 6 months and for the past 1.5 months has been living in a residential recovery program group home. She has found a job as a dishwasher and desires to do the “right thing”. When asked to define the ‘right thing”, Virginia mentions to stay off drugs, stay off the streets, to stay clean, and save up money to move into her own apartment. Virginia did not complete the 11th grade. She mumbles when speaking and her speech is difficult to understand at times. When speaking to her, one often has to rephrase the question or revisit the question to get a more accurate response. Virginia enjoys

When I was younger I had always been described as mature. Although I wasn’t anywhere near being “mature”, it was a word always used to describe me, well-mannered and mature. While my brother was goofy and social, I was shy and serious. We were twins yet total opposites. As a child, because that was the word almost always associated with me, it crae unusual, almost toxic idea about myself. I had to be mature to be what people liked about me. So, it never occurred to me to be able to not take myself seriously and say something like “Oops that was dumb” and laugh it off. For some reason that didn’t make sense to me to say silly things like that.

I arrived at practice with my shoes laced, hair pulled back, and the mindset that I was unstoppable. I could play against every member of my team and come out the victor on any given day. It was the first day of practice that week, and challenge matches were scheduled to begin. The team went through our daily shuffle of drills, conditioning, and running to prepare for what was lying ahead. While warming up with my friends, I felt great, talking about homecoming, boys, and a variety of irrelevant events. I felt ready. The odds were in my favor and nobody could stop me.

It was near the end of my 8th grade school year, about 2 month away from graduation, when something I never expected to happen actually happened. This event really changed my life forever and shaped me into who I am as a person today. I had just arrived at my house after school when my parents received a call that my grandma was ill and that we should come down to check on her. As we rushed down to my grandparents house, my family was deeply concerned about what may have happened because my grandma had never really had many health issues before this. As we arrived at their house and walked through the door, we were greeted with the sight of my grandma sitting in a chair with a blanket around her while she was sleeping. My family’s first reaction

It was a cold day in November as I scampered out of my Biology class, unsatisfied with the grade that I had received on my exam. I rushed to the basement of my campus’s athletic facility brimming over with frustration and quickly tossed aside my school supplies in exchange for a pair of soccer cleats and goalkeeper gloves. I threw over my grass-stained gray cotton sweatshirt, stepped outside to the bite of an approaching winter and joined my comrades in our warm-up lines. The boys were all laughing and talking about what happened over the weekend as we prepared for another practice. Being surrounded by my teammates made me forget about my worries and allowed me to disappear into the routine of physical activity. My collegiate varsity soccer

Lush, green grass began to massage my bare feet. Sunshine beamed off the clean, white goal posts. With my cleats in my hands, ball in my bag, and my freshly washed shirt, only one thing came to mind: soccer. The sport I love and have devoted the past three years was evolving. Many of my friends were shifting from recreational to club soccer. After three years of recreational soccer, I decided to take my game to the next level and tryout for club soccer. Eager to showcase my skills, I stood on the field bearing confidence. Before tryouts began, my thoughts solely consisted of playing club soccer with my friends. I thought little about tryout preparation, because I didn’t know what to expect. No one gave me information about how to perform well