You Are Too Small

The year was 2010. I was on my way to my first swim meet. I had no idea what to expect. I was both anxious and nervous. These feelings tripled as my team arrived and began to warm up. Looking around at the other teams I could not help but get the sense that I did not belong. All the other swimmers had well-defined muscles and little body fat while I had well-defined body fat and little muscle definition. None of the other competitors took me seriously as I took my mark for the race. I did not take myself seriously. However, once the event was over, I had finished 2nd out of 23 competitors in my event. This experience is an example of how judgment based on body alone can be misleading. From the moment we are born we are judged by others, and

My family was born to play basketball, both of my brothers had the size and athleticism to play professionally, and my dad towered over others standing at 6’6”. At a young age I was expected to follow in their footsteps. However, I did not have the size that the rest of my family did, and struggled to compete due to my small stature. In the seventh grade I tried out for my middle school basketball team and was promptly told I wasn’t good enough to play. I came home crying feeling that I disappointed my family. The next year, during the eighth grade try-outs, the coach said the same thing and broke my heart for the second year in a row. Dissatisfied with these results, I promised that I would make a change before entering high school.

My story begins on the boy's varsity swim team for Hilton High School. Before beginning the season I had taken a two-year break, so I was quite rusty and out of shape. At the beginning of the season, I had a hard time getting breathing patterns back and making sure my technique was good. I would be negative and tell myself that I could not do it or I would tell myself that I was too fat to be a swimmer and I should just give up. But every day I seemed to walk through the pool doors to begin another day of practice. The first meet of

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.

Ever since I was 8 years old, lacrosse has been my life. My teammates are my family, the field is my home, and the game is a huge part of who I am. When I was 12 and entering middle school I decided it was time to join a more

Sometime around fall of my freshman year, I decided to join the Marmion lacrosse team, mainly because many of my friends were playing, but also because its exciting nature intrigued me. I did not realize it at the time, but this decision would end up changing my life. Being an athletic person, along with lacrosse being a relatively easy sport to learn, I became a good player on the freshman team. I worked my way up the ranks, from getting minimal playing time at first, then starting a few games in. A little under halfway through the season, the JV coach asked me

When I showed up to softball tryouts at the beginning of my senior year, I was convinced that I was going to be put on the junior varsity team for the fourth consecutive year. I was sure that I would never be moved up to varsity, regardless of how hard I played. My junior year I was embarrassed to be one of only two juniors on J.V. I was so self-conscious, that I had considered quitting so that I wouldn’t be the only senior not on varsity. However, I decided that quitting would be more humiliating than being on J.V. and forced myself to play my final season of softball. I showed up to tryouts the first week of school, and I played with every ounce of effort that I had. When teams were announced, I was legitimately shocked to find out that I

We would always begin our practices with sprints and one long run before we continued with technical drills. Many girls struggled with the endurance aspect of soccer. I would always do my best to finish the run, then immediately head back to the last person running in to finish so that they would not feel singled out during these athletic struggles. I thought of how great our soccer team was going to become. The chemistry seemed just right and to the point where we could see ourselves winning the district tournament at the end of the year. Unfortunately, my dreams of victory came to a halt when I started to see divisions on the team. These divisions started due to one of the seniors talking down to underclassman, especially to one of the most talented girls on the team who became our top scorer. This particular senior became jealous of our top scorer and decided to ban girls together so they wouldn’t assist her in her attempts to score. Thankfully our team’s talent led us to win most of our games, but I could see how much these divisions were hurting us as a team. I decided to talk to my soccer coach about the matter to get his opinion. He reminded of my captain position, and how I am expected try to resolve these situations as well. I concluded that

Leadership is the action of leading a group of people or an organization. Leadership is necessary in all facets of life. Not everyone has leadership abilities, and those who do, are gifted with an amazing capability: to lead. In the past year I have demonstrated leadership on and off the

I was competing for a spot with girls I had never even seen before, and even worse: I had no idea what they were capable of. Tryouts gave me the same rush of adrenaline I felt during my first performance. As much as I loved the feeling, I was terrified of it all at once. Once I made my first impression on the judges, it was time for the waiting game. It took a solid three weeks until I got my letter in the mail that held my future cheer sealed inside. To my delight once more, the contents of the letter were more than exciting. “Congratulations! You are invited to cheer on Saint Francis Junior Varsity Cheerleading!” stated the letter in big bold block letters. The season flew by faster than the speed of light, and before I knew it I was feeling the adrenaline rush again inside the sticky, hot gym. I put my spot on the squad in jeopardy by going for the varsity squad as a junior, which was something very risky because the seniors always got selected above a junior. Taking this risk was something I would have never done, as I used to always play it safe. An upperclassman I had confided in when I met her during my basketball season watched my tryout from outside the window looking into the gym, and she said I had killed it, and the letter I received that April reflected that. I was one of two juniors cheering on the football squad of all seniors.

An This football camp I attended was only for the elite offensive linemen in the state of Massachusetts, but I received an invite my senior year to attend this. I was nowhere near one of the elite offensive linemen in the state, but the coach that ran it was a coach in my league. I have been battling it out with his team for the past three years, and the last person I expected anything from was this man. I was the smallest left tackle in our entire league for my entire high school career. But this coach admired my hustle, passion, and perseverance of being a smaller player, I also stopped his top defensive end every single year. So, when I got to the camp, all the other players would look at me like I was a boy among men. That whole week I was doing everything in my power to keep up with them, but my skills weren’t comparable to theirs. The thing that got me noticed at the camp was I went up against the biggest and most skilled guys there and didn’t care for one minute about getting shown up. I wanted to be the best player I could be, and the only way that would be possible is if I went against the best.

I had gotten my first summer job where I was required to work at least 35 hours a week and with some of the money I saved up from my summer job I bought a regulation sized soccer net for my front yard. I worked seven hours everyday from 5:30am to 12:30pm and as soon as I got home I put on my cleats, grabbed a ball, and went outside to practice for about two hours. If it rained I either went to the local indoor soccer facility or in my garage. I found new moves on how to get around a defender from YouTube and I worked on them until they were perfect. Soccer tryouts were in the beginning of August and I felt more prepared than ever before. The coaches were a little surprised to see me because they thought I might have given up after being let down twice but this time was going to be different. I tried all the moves that the internet had taught me and I came in third for speed and agility testing. As I was leaving after the last day of tryouts my soccer coach stopped me to say he was proud of my work and that things were looking good for me being moved up. On the Monday after the results were supposed to be

This year, as a freshman, I decided to try out for a sport. I heard about field hockey and I was instantaneously intrigued. I asked some friends when was conditioning and went to the first one. There was only one other freshman at conditioning and so many upperclassmen. I was absolutely terrified because I didn't know anyone (except the other freshman, but I didn't even know her that well.) They were much older than me and very intimidating. I feared the upperclassmen due to thinking that I could never compete with them. Nevertheless, I came to every conditioning I could. I met some of the older girls and made a bunch of friends. I heard one of the other girls were talking about captains practice, so I bought a stick and went to the first practice.

What people don’t know about me is that from an early age I was involved in various dance classes. I was the typical “girly girl”, who got excited about the makeup and sparkly pink recital costumes that I got to wear each spring. In contrast to that girl, I was also the athlete who didn’t mind getting dirty with a slide into home plate. For many years I lived both these lives, until it got to the point that I needed to quit dancing to get more serious about softball. Having dance behind me for a couple of years, I made an impulsive decision at the beginning of my eighth grade school year, to try out for the school cheer team. When I told my softball friends I was thinking about trying out, they thought it was a joke. I had close friends though, who have been doing cheer all their lives and they convinced me that it was a great opportunity. I knew I could handle the teasing from my peer group, but what I was most worried about was how I was going to explain my decision to my softball coaches. Conversations I've had with them in the past have led me to believe that they were not very accepting of the sport.

I am a runner for the cliffside park middle school and i got a call from Miami florinda if i could run in their marathon. I was so proud to be running in their seasonal marathon it was a lifetime opportunity. I was doing some research and i red that it is a competitive marathon. A few days later we went to Miami and we had to go check in. we also had to check if i was eligible to run because i turned 13. We got everything cleared up and i could run. Then a few hours passed and we had to go to the running field. The coach said that the only objective was to run around the field twice and come back to the line. I came back to cliffside park middle school as first place. I was happy that i made cliffside park middle school proud.