Personal Narrative: My First Field Hockey

The day was October 8th, 2014. I hardly played. One school day, my 5th teacher, Ms. Smit said, “flyers for the basketball team on the table” ordinarily I took one. Kids from 4th, 5th, and 6th grade came to try out for the team. After tryouts, a paper next to the nurse's office was hung up. The paper sheet named those who had made the team. Surprisingly, I made the team, most likely from my height. I felt like I shouldn’t have made the team. At the time, I barely started to play basketball. I went to the practices at school and tried to make myself a little bit better, since a tournament was about to begin in a few weeks.

My heart was pounding like an elephant walking as I waited in line, although I wasn’t even really that nervous. In my head I knew it was going to be hard to make the team as a 6th grader I think that’s why I didn't get myself all worked up about it and nervous because there was a 50% chance of me making the team. In my head, I said to myself that I would love to make the team.

Hockey has defined my personality and made me into the person that I am today. It is a very demanding sport, however, I can't imagine my life without it. With my family's rich history in hockey, it was my destiny to become a hockey player. Ever since I started playing hockey 11 years ago I have loved it. Hockey has made major impacts on my life both positively and negatively; these effects in the community, with family, and at school have molded me into the person I am today.

It was my sophomore year, and the day had come to find out who made the varsity lacrosse team. We piled into the locker room to discover rows of brand new helmets. The list of the varsity players was written on the whiteboard. The team was excited, the locker room buzzing with noise. My heart dropped as I realized that my name wasn’t written there. My friends were admiring their new helmets and I had to hold back tears and disappointment. I know now that I still had to be developed at the junior varsity level, but it wasn’t easy to understand back then. At practice that day, I played out of pure spite, every move filled with rage. You aren’t good enough, I thought. I left practice that day without saying goodbye to my friends.

“I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win! One! Two! Three! Gooooo Breakers!” I believe that those six words helped my lacrosse team win the championship game and motivate me to score my first goal of the season!

I do not get surprised easily, but when I scored my first lacrosse goal, I was pretty shocked. I have considered myself as a decent lacrosse player; however, I did not score a single goal in my first season. Similar to my first season, my second season started out with me struggling get open and score goals. Fortunately, as the season progressed, I started to learn how to get open and get pass my defender. All of this came to fruition when I scored my first goal. It was the first quarter and our opponent had just turned the ball over. Our team was able to clear the ball past the midfield line, so I dropped into my designated position around ten feet away from the goal. Strikingly, the midfielder with the ball saw me open and passed it to me.

My first Opening season game was two years ago at the Blues Hockey stadium in ST. Louis Mo. It was a cold day, The sun was barely shining and I had just got to ST. Louis driving thru the city making our way to the hockey rink. The traffic was horrible and not safe there was tons of people walking on the streets trying to get to that game. When we finally got there we pulled into the parking garage and got out the car after we did that we put on our jerseys and went to the side of the garage and watched tons of people rolling in and not to mention the band that was there. After the band was done we went inside and found our seats when we got there we had an unlimited buffet of food to eat, I had chicken tenders, hot chocolate, soda, and hot

Sixty minutes. A field hockey team has sixty minutes to prove that it worked longer, faster, and harder than the opposing team. The countless amounts of effort, time, sweat, and pain all pays off during those sixty minutes. Practice is close to indescribable; after the warm up run, we sprint. After we sprint, we do drills. If we don’t sprint in the drills, we do more sprints. Summing it up simply, the running is intense and extensive. The practices are long and hot, and the expectations for performance are extremely high. I absolutely love it.

As a member of the lacrosse team, I often hear our coach utter many words about the class of the team. At the start of the season, I disregarded these words as drivel, and continued to act the same way. I had always seen myself as a man with class, and would not have given much thought to any wrongdoings I may have had, and played them off. I have since realized that the way in which you act, holds more prevalence on the way you are portrayed as a person, and impacts the way you will get through life.

It all started at 2, when my father bought me skates, and made a skating rink in my backyard. Then, I got into the sport, which at 6, I was nationally known, and people were lining up for autographs at 10, had interviews for magazines at 15, 17 he was in the WHA, then the NHL the year later. It was fast, how I moved through my life, but I couldn’t think of a life different life like it.

It was cloudy in the late morning, which meant even the weather didn’t look promising, Even more optimistically looking it seemed like the clouds were about to rupture into trillions of droplets each one a part of me about to shatter from humiliation. And obviously rain and humidity were the best conditions for field hockey. The building looked more downcast than I’d ever seen it, and when my dad parked the car it became more evident that this was not going to go as faultlessly as I hoped it would.

The wind howled in the daylight.  Chills ran up my back.  That's how you know it is fall in New Jersey.   The leaves fell to the ground as they turned an ombre color.  “Come on!”, my mom shouted in frustration.

What is it that makes a person get out of bed everyday, and face the challenges in life that sometimes make you just wonder why you keep pressing on? Why do we push ourselves to the edge of utter destruction every time we get up in the morning? Well I believe these questions can be answered with one single word, but if you want to know that you will have to read the rest of this paper.

It was approaching the hockey state tournament, but it was not the hockey games that I was nervous for. My rookie haircut was “scheduled” for the Thursday before that weekend.

Today, I’m not going to miss the game. I instinctively ran through the hallways as I 've done throughout every Friday. My hockey game is always on Friday we have a match against another AA team, sometimes we lose and sometimes we win but today’s the big game, I can’t be late. While running I took two immense steps one at a time down and out the stairwell. “ Not going to be late, Not going to be late.” I just repeated this phrase in my head over and over again as I dashed out the main entrance, nudged someone and squeezed my way through the automatic door.