Personal Narrative: Varsity Experience

Day in, and day out, I was perfecting my performance, therefore Coach Dawn did not have to hesitate on choosing me to be on the team. When it was time for me to show off my skills I was beyond confident. We began running drills, I missed a few serves, but I was still amped up to do more. Less than seven minutes into our practice she had me gather all the volleyballs and put them in the cart.

My freshman year of high school Coach Specht was the assistant soccer coach, at tryouts he told me that I would have a bright future as a player and could possible play varsity as as a freshman. Throughout the year I keep putting in the time and finally half way through the season I got my chance to play my first varsity game. This showed me that he really believed in my skill, to put a freshman in against mostly juniors and seniors. Not many coaches will risk putting someone that young on the field. From there on out I played in most of the varsity games. I may not of started or played the whole game but it was a great learning experience and really helped me improve as a player. What made playing varsity even better is that we went on to win the school's first league title that year. Without coach Specht’s trust in me I wouldn’t of been able to experience winning the league.

In high school I played baseball, basketball and track and worked my way up to varsity after my first year of playing. My coach for baseball was Coach Toole, for basketball Coach Miller, and track was Coach Swenson. All these coaches helped me significantly improve my game and my life. I thank them all for that.

I have had the privilege to know Allison for the past seven years as her strength and conditioning coach and family friend. In my fifteen years of working with student athletes and adults, I have had the honor and privilege to train hundreds of outstanding athletes. Allison stands out as one of the sharpest, passionate, diligent and reliable student athletes I have ever trained.

When I went to Pike High School I participated in an activity called color guard for four years. Color guard is a performing arts activity that incorporates dance while using flags, rifles, and sabers. When I began this activity I barely understood what I was getting myself into. Our team got abandoned by our coach for most of the winter season my freshman year, so our show was pretty awful. We went to competitions with expectations of losing and embarrassment among our peers. At this point everyone was discouraged about how our winter season ended. It was not far to the seniors who gave their whole high school years for this activity. Something had to be changed to in order for our team to progress in the future. Second semester our guard Director, Mr. Emmert, hired Nick Bledsoe as our new coach. Though he was a skinny short white guy with blond hair something about him was intimidating. He walked into the guard room like he owned the place. He sat up with such a great posture that I straightened up from my usual slouch. The seniors did not like Nick too much, but their only wish for him was to not give up on us. From that day forward Nick dedicated his work towards our team regardless of how challenging it was to manage. My guard coach Nick was amazing because of how passionate he was about his profession at my high school.

The experience of coaching impacted me majorly, and helped to build my character to what it is today. This service project was not only extremely important to the community, it was also extremely important to me personally because I was able to express this love with young girls that were aspiring to follow my in footsteps. The pressure of having young girls look up to me in every aspect of life such as, cheerleading, academics, and character, added to the accountability of building my character to one that is desirable. Because I knew so many young girls were looking up to me, I made sure that I set the example that my five year old self once looked up

I had four different swim coaches growing up and two of them were significantly influential in demonstrating how I wanted to be as a person and leader. From the age of five and until sixth grade, I did not have much of a connection or relationship with my coaches. It was more of a swim program that was held after school with some year round competitions. Once I entered Junior High School, swimming became more serious. I ended up trying out and making the year round national competition team. I swam for Mission San Jose Aquatics until the end of summer in 2006. My coach’s name was Debbie Potts. Debbie Potts was someone that everyone respected. She earned her respect by how she treated others with respect and with being a very supportive person. My relationship with her was good and I spent a lot of time with her since I was one of her top swimmers. During the summers I would work for her, helping her managed aspects of the team’s paper work, in addition to helping her with her business in vending swimming apparel and gear. Not only did I get

Coaching sports can be volunteer work for most parents, but for others it can be a paid job. Coaches assist athletes to develop their full potential and are responsible for training athletes in a sport by analyzing their performances, instructing in relevant skills and by providing encouragement. Coaches are a factor in an athlete’s life because they can be that big influence that changes their demeanor on how they go about life. I am interested in coaching at any level of competition. I would not mind doing it at the high school because I want to prepare teenagers for that college transition and

I was very dissatisfied with my first season. I felt that I did nothing. My complaint led me to make the choice of being a manager in the girl's season. Being the manager means that I could have more time to watch the top member's skills and movements during the helping of training and games. I also took this chance to learn badminton game scoring and ask for advice from the top members about badminton skills. I felt that I was a sponge which absorbed a lot of skills.

Sports participation has prepared me for the future by making me stronger physically and mentally. Throughout my many days as a high school athlete I came across many hardships, coaches, losses, wins, and much more. The hardships were very unwanted, but they made me stronger mentally by learning to cope with criticism. I will have to encounter criticism in my everyday life as an adult, and experiencing it early in life makes it easier and less severe for the future. I have had many wins and been a part of countless exciting victories, this gave me happiness and hope for the future. Next, losses and defeat is a hard thing to accept, but I believe it shows me that the forthcoming will have difficulties that I must be able to bear. It has taught

Hi Coach Clarke! I don't check this email as frequently as I should over the summer, so I apologize for not getting back sooner. But, my summer has been going well! I play for a 9th grade (rising sophomore) team, and we usually play up in tournaments. In June, we went to the Gym Rat Challenge in Albany, and I did struggle a little bit, but my team still did well. So far in July, we've gone to the Blue Chip USA Invitational at Spooky Nook in Manheim, PA. I played really well there, and so did my team, our record was 4-2. And this week, I traveled with the 11th grade (rising senior) team to the Battle in the Boro tournament in Nashville. I had a GREAT time because I played really well against girls three years older than me, which is always fun.

The first day of practice was very nerve racking and intimidating. Being the only girls in a large group of boys who were much tougher than us was challenging. It was difficult to keep up with everyone, especially since we were not great at the sport. As weeks passed and academic ineligibility took out many players, including my friend, I became the only female player on the team. It was now even more difficult because I felt alone. I could have quit at that point, but was determined to keep going and improve my skills.

I remember when our first practice happened he made us run suicides for a straight 30 minutes. One kid even threw up. Spring break started but it didn’t even feel like it since we had to wake up eight am every day that week to have practice. We would do intense workouts like bear crawls, mountain climbers, and push-ups. One kid even decided to quit the team. After spring break Coach Krastov told us “The fun begins now.” During these “fun” practices, whenever I made a mistake, Coach Krastov would make more stereotypes about me saying stuff like "Kevin you can eat curry later stop thinking about it now.", the whole team would laugh and I would feel embarrassed but it motivated me not to make mistakes and I would improve throughout the season. I felt like I was working so hard during volleyball practices. He would also make fun of other people as well saying their stereotypes, our team had every nationality. He told Chinese people "stop doing math in their heads". Also, he told the Hispanics if they were illegal or not. Everyone else also was working hard so they wouldn’t be made fun of by Coach Krastov. I felt like that was

I have had two coaches during my high school years. One coach for my freshman thru junior years and a new coach this year for my senior year. In my opinion, my previous coach focused most of her time and instruction on the varsity runners only and did not encourage or instruct the JV runners to help them improve.

Before Coach Bailey, I would travel to PE, stretch, listen to the teacher chat about health, play a game, and never consider it for the rest of the day, if ever. Coach Bailey helped discover the athlete that was hiding deep inside. He made PE come to life. I remember him cracking jokes and using hilarious voices to teach us about being healthy and the different fundamentals of fitness. He would create games that were beyond just basic tag or dodge-ball. I found myself daydreaming about fitness and PE all the time, counting the minutes until I was back in that gym. During Coach Bailey’s first year as our PE teacher, he coordinated the President’s Physical Fitness Challenge. This was a series of fitness challenges from push up’s and pull-up’s to a shuttle relay and flexibility test. As I was completing these challenges the competitor inside came to life. All I wanted to do was WIN!! I found myself trying as intense as I had ever tried before. I wound up earning first place in the shuttle relay and Coach Bailey encouraged me to join the track team. Being on the track team helped to develop my talents as a runner and brought out the athlete I never knew existed inside. I continued running track in middle school and high school and won a silver medal at the state track meet my junior year. My love for fitness still rings true in my class and at my school. Just