Personal Narrative: The Record

Growing up with a father in the military, you move around a lot more than you would like to. I was born just east of St. Louis in a city called Shiloh in Illinois. When I was two years old my dad got the assignment to move to Hawaii. We spent seven great years in Hawaii, we had one of the greatest churches I have ever been to name New Hope. New Hope was a lot like Olivet's atmosphere, the people were always friendly and there always something to keep someone busy. I used to dance at church, I did hip-hop and interpretive dance, but you could never tell that from the way I look now.

Freshman year was the definition of devastation. Nothing went well for me that year. Even now, I still struggle with the thought of it. I was in transition from Orlando, Florida to Decatur, Georgia. It was getting kind of close to the end of basketball season. We played the Morrow High School Mustangs that night and I was in for a special treat. One of their big post players was about my height and close to three hundred pounds. Compared to my one hundred and twenty pounds she was pretty much a beast. At the beginning we were doing well, no fouls, good solid defense, even scoring, everything was perfect. I'm playing at the top of the 3-2 set defense. The Mustangs are up by one point with a little less than a minute until half

Of course the norm for me is that of any citizen living in zone three.

I rode home with my family after the varsity game, It was really quiet. We went to practice Monday and I was named starting center. We got a talk on how we could’ve done better and on what we did right. Coach Warden Said he’d give us an F on defense and an F on offense. We went into our first home game 1-0 with high hopes of beating Mount Vernon. I was pumped when we walked out onto the field Friday to get warmed up for our game. Considering it was our first home game as high schoolers. We went out and took a 6-0 lead after we failed the 2-point conversion in the first quarter. We scored again early in the second quarter to take a 14-0 lead after we made our first 2-point conversion out first of the year. The rest of the quarter was all Mount Vernon, the came back and tied us at half 14-14. Coach gave a speech at halftime, which I personally think it stuck in our heads the rest of the game. We ended up winning 34-28, I felt super happy like a lion catching it’s prey. We got ready for Davenport the next week but got hammered terribly. The final score was 48-6, they played some sophomores that made a differences, but we couldn’t do anything about

I quickly swallowed my homemade authentic Indian food leftovers and gulped down my chocolate milk. Looking down at my watch that read 11:28am, I knew that I only had two minutes until my most favorite part of the day: recess. This particular day in 5th grade, I had run a lap around the playground before getting the rest of recess to myself. As I started walking for my warmup, another student ran up and said, “My parents said that your people caused 9/11.” Completely caught off guard, I held back the tears in my eyes and tried to shake off his comment. I had never encountered something like this.

The team had some rough times getting to these championships. One of our best players,my really good friend, and captian, Nina had broken her collarbone while playing against Kelly Road. We had still pulled through to reach our last game. This season was amazing, we had the best couches,and best team. This was a huge step for me in my basketball career but i am so glad that I tryed out in the first place. I have bounded with this team so well and am glad I can proudly call my teammates friends. However, this will notbe the last time P.G.S.S will see us, we will be back for another amazing

In the winter of my junior year, my basketball team won the district tournament. It had been a season of ups and downs, but we peaked at the right moment. We later qualified for the state tournament. Collectively we felt that we could win the championship; the momentum was with us. Unfortunately, due to two uncharacteristically sloppy and draining games, we were eliminated. After our final game, we went back to the locker room in silence. Soon, the only audible sounds were the crying of all twelve girls. Twelve girls that gave everything to each other were now devastated that their time together was over. Twelve girls sat in a circle with their faces buried in their jerseys, broken and exhausted. In that moment as we sat and cried and reflected

It was the evening before our departure to Richmond to compete in the 1A Basketball State Semi-Finals against Radford High School. We were at practice and Coach Burns wanted to have a meeting before practice. As we gathered around coach, he looked at all of us and said, “I love every single one of you guys.” I think that meant something special to all of us on that team. He trusted us that we would play our hearts out during this game and come out victorious. I think to myself, we can do this; we can beat Radford, who had beaten us earlier in the season.

The second season came around and after three days of tryouts, I was named captain for the Junior Varsity team. I was proud of myself and so was the coach with my improvement. Midway through the season, I was moved up to Varsity. It wasn't a big deal for some, but to me it felt like passing your driver's test or getting an A on a project. I felt proud of my accomplishment and I had a new sense of determination to get better. After losing the first round playoff game, I wanted to get even better so I worked hard during the off season day in and day out. Before I knew it, the season was on my doorstep, knocking. We started off rough, losing our first 5 games. I saw that everyone on the team was slowly giving up. We had a team meeting and I gave a speech to motivate the team, which helped.We won the next game. Our confidence went up, but then we lost the next game. For some reason, though, no one seemed to be bothered. We went on a 4 game winning streak after. We made it the playoffs, but we lost in the first around again. After the game, I gave another speech on getting better as a team and holding our heads up high. After the season ended, I noticed coaches were starting to scout

Going into 7th grade, my team and I were excited for football. We had recently had success in 6th grade football and were expecting to do great in our first season of middle school football. After a couple weeks or so of practice, we get to our first game and we lose. We were all sad and upset because of course we wanted to go undefeated. Then I figured it's just one game we will get the next one. Well, that's not how it went, at all, really. We ended up losing five out of our six games, the only win coming against Hampton which I’m pretty sure they didn’t win a game so, we weren’t very happy with that. Through the season, I was not playing well and neither was my team. I also noticed that more and more people were starting to have negative attitudes and many people wanted to quit. At one point, I

What if you can only pick a movie, book, or tv show that would not be destroyed.? we would love to save all differents kind of movies, books, and tv shows, but you can only pick one! I would pick the tv show spongebob, the divergent book and movie, and diners drive-ins, and dives .

In the upcoming summer of Junior year, I experienced a valuable lesson about life that occurred in a Basketball game. To begin with, the Independence Basketball team had offseason training for the whole summer. During that summer, my teammates and i worked extremely hard to become an unstoppable Junior Varsity team. As the team trained, we were entered to play at Arizona Christian University for almost the whole summer. In short, we have never played at ACU before and were excited to play. As we played teams at ACU, the Independence Jv only lost 2 games in total and entered the ACU tournament. In the tournament, we were playing in the Semifinals against Moon Valley. I remember that day, as a team, we all motivated each other and were focused to

Football in high school took utmost of my time. It made myself set family plus friend’s aside since it was a sport I committed myself to every day. I knew I was not going to be playing at the professional or college level yet I desired to have a good high school team; unfortunately that did not occur. My junior year, we won two games and lost the rest. During my senior year, we won four games and lost the rest, but that was two more games won than the previous year. Occasionally it felt like all that work and obligation was not worth it. During the last home game, however my team and I, did something outrageous. We proved to all those newspapers, opposing teams, and loyal and un-loyal fans that with hard work and team work, we were able to achieve great things.

On a cold, rainy day in Chapel Hill North Carolina I was coming back from a long day of classes and

My freshman year of high school basketball was almost coming to an end. Our record was pretty stellar, and we needed one more win to get the wildcard, which meant we would automatically make it to state. My team was playing against Malcolm, in a really tight game. We were down by two points and Coach Henkel put me in to shoot a three-pointer, but both of our hopes and dreams were short lived. I missed the shot, and I lost the game for us. I was devastated, and so was everyone else. As I sat in the locker room, all I could do was stare at the ground. The only thing running through my mind was, no one is going to trust me with the ball anymore or worse yet, everyone is going to be mad at me. These thoughts were slowly tearing me down, day by day. But that was until Coach Henkel talked to me, and told me not to worry about missing the shot. He told me everyone misses, and that he wasn’t to worried. So, I was given two options, dwell on the past and let that affect my playing, or forget about it and move on.