During the Winter of 2015, I was a sophomore in high school who was unmotivated to succeed. Most of my academic career I coasted by with sparse bursts of effort that were sufficient enough to sustain my passing GPA. I cared about little other than getting home everyday to ignore my homework and play videogames for hours on end. At that time I weighed the most I ever have in my life, eating unhealthy paired with a lethargic lifestyle. My math teacher at the time was Mr. Stern, a 6-foot tall, 260 pound Jewish man, who was balding. I was in his homeroom class, sitting in a generic green school chair, when he let us know he would start coaching the varsity wrestling team. At the time I had almost no idea what high school wrestling was, I had …show more content…
I have never ran that much in my life previously, so at the end of it I was bent over coughing my lungs out from exhaustion. I looked around, and to my surprise, the roughly 20 other guys were also exhausted. This made me feel a little better, but I was still sure I would not make the cut, simply because of my terrible physical shape. We all went back inside the lunchroom, slowly, and got settled up standing on the lunchrooms scuffed yellow and white floors. The next part of tryouts was general strength and conditioning exercises, which included carrying another person around, in our weight class, on our backs and running back and forth in the cafeteria. Now back then I weighed around 195 pounds with very little muscle, so when I was tasked with carrying another one of the heavyset people, I nearly fell onto the floor, buckling under his weight. The rest of the exercises included more running, push ups, sit ups, wall sits (all on the dirty lunchroom floor), and then it was over after two hours. Let me tell you this, the smell of a school lunchroom mixed with the sweat of over 20 sweaty high school kids is abhorrent. When I got home that day I was exhausted, and fell asleep straight away thinking I did all of that for nothing because I would not make it. This series of events repeated for three days, the length of the tryouts. The next day I heard the results were posted outside the gym, so when I
My palms were sweating, my heart was racing, I had no idea what to expect or who I was going to meet. I was never the type of girl to embrace new situations, I hated change and I wasn’t very good with meeting new people. I figured once I got to high school it would be my chance to start all over, turn the page in my book of life, and flip over a new leaf. I wanted to finally be the girl that fit in with everyone. I had imagined myself going to parties with big groups of my new friends, having sleepovers and doing all of the things cool high school kids normally do. I was certain that my high school career would be just like one of those really corny teen movies and I would live happily ever after with the homecoming crown and the boy of my
Going through high school the days were all the same, except for game days. There was just something different about the culture of the school. You could almost feel the excitement in the air. Every “Good luck tonight,” that was received made it feel like the whole school was rooting for me. This was my senior year and tonight was an especially big game. The game that night would decide if we made playoffs and if I could step on the court as a Hawk again.
“Honey, you have so much left to learn,” She starts as she looks at me her eyes full of warmth, “just because you’re younger doesn’t mean you can’t put just as much effort into it. You play with so much passion and that’s what makes you different than all those other kids.” she grabbed my bag from the backseat, “I know that it’s scary and that all you want to do is give up, but why not just try? What’s the harm in trying? If you don’t make the team no one will hold against you. You just need to be confident and I guarantee you those coaches will fall in love. Do your best and that will always be enough.” She handed me my bag and I looked down at it. I was having an internal war inside my head debating on listening or just giving up. I finally let her words register in my mind and I realized she was right. I opened the door and hopped out of the car. I almost left, but before I did I turned back and
I approached that year’s conditioning with a pessimistic attitude and wondered why was I doing this when I’m not going to run in meets. Just like the year before, I assumed that conditioning and practicing would be obsolete. I braced myself for another disappointing year. Every winter day after school, I braced myself against the cold with a hope that this season would be different. I went into the first day of practice feeling in shape and optimistic. But just like freshman year, there was no preparing for the ache and suffering of the first practice. With the season approaching, our coach timed us to determine who would run in meets. Our coach divided us into groups based on how fast she thought we were. When a senior saw that I was in the first, slower group, he said that I belonged in the faster group with them. Hearing that compliment from a senior changed my outlook on the season might go. As the first track meet approached, we split off into groups so we could perfect our technique based on the event we were running. As I was jogging around the track wondering whether this year was going to be the same as last year, our coach summoned me over to perfect baton handoffs for the 4x100 meter relay. As the realization hit me that I was going to compete, I thought, “I’m not going to relinquish this spot because I labored profusely to attain
It was important for me to keep up the positivity at practice even though I had been feeling negative. Despite my feelings for the sport, I was sacrificing everything for my team so we could stay together. We had awesome practices where we got so much done and then we also had practices that weren’t so great. But each time, my girls pushed through. And then, soon enough November was here and it was competition season. We were doing full-outs, the whole routine, 10 to 20 times every practice and then fixing and cleaning up our technique in between each full-out. Each time, the full-outs became harder as we were using more and more energy. But still, we pushed through. The night before, I went to bed early to prepare my body for what I knew was going to be a very long day ahead of me. Sometime in the middle of the night, I received a text saying our competition had been cancelled due to the host school having a lockdown the previous day. We had to wait. After all of the preparation we had had, we were forced to wait all of Thanksgiving break and then compete. So, we went on Thanksgiving break and I tried my hardest to get my mind where it needed to be for the competition. When we returned from break, we had exactly one practice left before our competition. As soon as everyone arrived, I could already tell something was off. And that is when we were told that one of our girls wouldn’t be competing with us due to grades. I don’t think I have ever felt so frustrated before. I was in complete shock that she had done this to us. But we had become that team that could bounce back from anything and we didn’t let this get us down. We rearranged the routine. The day finally came for us to compete. All day, I was anxious, wanting my team to do amazing but also to win. When we got to the school, everyone’s nerves were on but I knew we had it. I could feel it in my skin. I could feel myself
I walk into the Humid, Uncomfortable gymnasium for the first day of the most stressful thing anyone has to go through tryouts, Basketball tryouts. It was a dreadful three days being the smallest guy on the court and hoping to get a spot, but the only thing i could do was my best. But things didn't go as planned and that is sometimes a good thing, It's the third day of tryouts and the last as we are waiting to see if we made or not i hear my name and a few others get called into the coach's office my heart drops and my palms start to sweat and I walk in and he says with a soft voice “ you guys have potential and are good but didn't quite make the cut” and I was upset but who knew it was for the better. That night wrestling was already the word being tossed around in my house and it was definitely on
High School has definitely given me many potentials. Transferring from Leuzinger High School to Moreno Valley High School has made me noticed that I’ve learned a lot such as: how to problem solve, how to not give up on myself, and how to accomplish difficult tasks. For example, when I attended Leuzinger High School, I wasn’t open-minded. This is because I didn’t take any useful opportunity for granted such as tutoring or extra credit. Then, when I moved to Moreno Valley High School, I finally took a chance to take any opportunity into consideration because more people influenced me, which made me believe in myself. The first opportunity I took for myself was going to tutoring for honors pre calculus. Because I played sports, I had to balance
I started to see improvement, and my coach must have noticed as well, because he invited me to come to the varsity tournament that weekend. I was excited for the opportunity to prove myself, but after sitting for the first two games, I worried that I wasn’t going to get my chance. When I saw that I wasn’t starting in the third and final game, I gave up nearly all hope that I would get to play. I was starting to wonder if all my hard work was even worth it, when, all of a sudden, my coach told me to get ready to go in. As I entered the game, I felt a little nervous, but I knew I was prepared. This was the opportunity I had been waiting
I snuck in to leave and get dressed. Just as I finished, however, the coach came in and questioned me. I didn’t want to admit to her that I was a failure, that I couldn’t do it, nor how embarrassed I was. I burst into a fit of tears and told her every excuse I could think of: “my mom made me do this”, “I fear drowning”, and biggest of all “I didn’t want to be here”. “It’s OK,” she comforted me, “everyone starts off somewhere”. But at the time, I couldn’t believe her. Everyone around me was so fast and capable; it was hard to imagine them in my
After the second week of four and a half hour practices, late nights, and a lot of tears it was the Friday of the assembly. I ambled up to my coach with shaking hands and the feeling of malady. She looked at me with quite concern asking if I would be alright. I disclosed to her, with tears filling my eyes, that I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it. I asked if she would be upset with me if I messed up and she replied with the utmost appreciation and said even if something goes wrong, she had never seen a more dedicated athlete in her life. I wiped the tears away, stood tall and walked to my place in the gym.
hen I first walked through Old Colony’s doors when I was a freshman I didn't know if my friends from my middle school were going to be there. Luckily a majority of my friends were accepted too but even if they weren't I was ready to make new ones. Freshmen year for me wasn't really nerve racking but I still had nerves because I was use to the middle school environment where I knew everyone but this was a totally different experience. The teachers that I was assigned to really helped with the middle school to high school transition and I am really thankful for that. Probably the best part of my freshman year was the exploratory program that I went through. There were a lot of shops that really caught my eye but the one that really stuck with
My high school education has prepared me for my next steps after graduation. There has been people that have help me get prepared for the next step and some of the education has helped me for the next step. School has prepared me because I known the basic skills needed out in the real world. Like math has help me get prepared for the money troubles and English has helped my right a resume to get a better job.
Completing my high school education has come with an array of struggles and challenges stemming from different sources and having varying degrees of difficulty. One of the major struggles I experienced in starting my high school experience was finding a place and a voice for myself among a large group of people who predominately didn't look or sound like me. Taking higher level classes, I often found myself being the only person of color in that class. As I began to make friends and assimilate into the environment I soon realized that having a different background to my classmates and friends unfortunately bridged a gap between how much the people around me could truly understand me and sympathize with who I was. Going to a school with a predominately
As I became older, entering my young teenage years in life, I took on the interest of playing sports for my middle school. I remember trying out for the girl’s basketball team in the summer going into the eighth grade. I know I had competition but I felt highly confident from the skills I gained during the previous years. Try outs were all morning and I caused my parents so much trouble from telling them in such a short notice. I anxiously waited for the final results, even though they weren’t posted on the gym door until later that evening. Later on that day I learned that I didn’t make
“Ew, I thought you said that the school still looked good! Not like some crippling mess!” I could hear one of my friends, Amber complained while the others grumbled in agreement. I let my thumbs trail up and down slowly rubbing against the steering wheel.