"One Stride at a Time “SET,†The starter exclaims as our 4x400 team and all the others wait in anticipation; the whole stadium is in absolute silence. Then, BANG, the starting pistol has goes off. The battle for the fastest 4x400 time in Arkansas has began. Bentonville High School’s team is composed of: Senior Billy Horton, Senior Harrison Shewmaker, Freshman Devin Dougherty, and myself. (I was a sophomore at the time.) This was my first time being on this relay team and I was petrified of letting my team down, especially on this big of a stage; the State Championship. I begin thinking of all the hard work I had put in to get here, all the hours, all the sweat. As I await the bouton to run my leg in the race I have a flashback to all the events leading up to this race, the things that got me here. …show more content…
The tryout was intense, seventy people showed up, but only forty made the team. It consisted of a 300m run, a 30m run, a med ball toss, a long jump, and a standing triple jump. I out performed my fellow sophomores in almost all the events. This made me realize I might actually have a future in track. I wanted to be great. I wanted to compete at state.
To be great i need to push myself to my limits each and every practice. So on Mondays and Wednesdays I worked on my strength, my speed, and my starts. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I worked on my stamina and my stride. Finally on Fridays I would test. The test would show my progress throughout the season. I would also stay late every day to lift and get stronger, that’s where I would push myself farther than teammates.
By the time the conference meet rolls around I have proven to Coach Anderson that I am in good enough shape and he decides to put me in the open 400m race to benchmark my time for the 4x400 he planned to run me in. I ran a 50.6, the 4th fastest on the team. That secured my spot in the
When I crossed the line I had decided that was the hardest and most painful race I had ever ran. Never had the pain gotten that bad, but that made me a little proud because I knew that I had tried my hardest. Brandon placed 2nd and ran as amazingly fast as he always had. Austin made a huge improvement in time and placed 12th. Sean did not do as well as expected but placed 25th. I myself placed 48th, which wasn’t awful. My time was decent. Justin tanked and he placed 56th. 56th wasn’t bad, but was expected to be much faster than me. Coach was a bit disappointed when we finished because based off of what he saw it did not look like we made it out. While we were back at “camp”, Sean pulled up the results on their phone.
Life has been rough here in the camp, while I may not be on the front lines with General Sherman, I am still an active member in the Civil War. The dog tents aren’t so bad once you get used to them. Once a week they come back to the camp and recruit more of us to go to the front lines and fight. Today is the day they come and I hope I get recruited. The confederates need to be stopped, slavery is wrong. I’m waiting to see if my name gets called. When my name doesn’t get called my heart sinks. Then I hear it.
Waking up at five in the morning isn't easy, especially when it's summertime. But that was my reality every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My dad would take me to Ballaban Field and just before practice I would lay down on that field and talk with my teammates for a few minutes. Then practice would start and the next three hours were the most challenging physical times of my life. First we stretched, this was the time to get our mind and body ready for the gauntlet that the coaches would throw down in front of us. Then coach would send offense or defense into the weight room first. If you didn't lift first then you immediately took your shirt off because you didn't want to throw up on your shirt. We'd run and run, surpassing our own expectations of toughness and grit. After running my body ached all over, but I knew we still had an hour of intense lifting ahead. After practice, I would be totally exhausted but satisfied knowing I
I was a minuteman in 1775 at the battle Lexington and Concord. So on that night I woke up and heard Paul Revere saying “The Regulars are coming!” I got up and got my clothes and started on my way to fight in concord. On the way I saw Paul Revere picked up someone. Then later I saw them going back and heard something about fish. When I got to Concord I saw a line of the other Minutemen and got in line next to them. Then we heard the regulars marching toward us with their fancy uniforms and guns. They looked like they were all the same ready to fire. So I look down our line and saw just a lot of untrained soldiers that had never fought in their life. So I looked back at the British army and a shiver went down my back.
The course is weird, it’s a two lap which is good. This means you know exactly what the second half of the race was going to be like. Me as the 4th runner, and the 3 and 5 guys, went single file for a good ⅜ ofa mile and we were zooming around corners. during the back half of the race, I was really close to medaling. I went as fast as I could, I had no idea how fast the race had been, I thought when I saw the teens clicking by it was a 19:teens but I got closer and it was 18:17 I was astounded and straight out of breath. That race we were 4 points behind the 2nd place team, and they were in our district. That set us up for a good week and effort during practice because if we had a race at the district race, we were going to make it as a team to state,which is the goal all season long. I was not feeling great that week and I thought it was going to be like my first xc race finishing with a 16:02 time for 2.x miles and a lot of girls beating me. The morning of race day, I felt like crap, but the bus ride nap to maryville made me feel fine and ready to secure a spot to state. There was a lot of scepticism from the seniors, who were facing their last
On Thursday, March 10th, 2016 I tried out for my second year of high school varsity cheer and my 4th year of cheer all together. On Friday, March 11th, 2016 I found out that I made the squad once again! I was so relieved, because I was not confident in my tryout at all. It had me a nervous wreck, I could hardly sleep at night! When you find out if you make it or not, it feels as if a ginormous weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. You no longer have that fear in the pit of your stomach and the voice in the back of your head saying “oh, what if you didn’t make it? What will you do with all of your time now?” Seeing your number
Tryouts are an athlete’s least desired activity, including my own. They make me fearful which ultimately developed through self-doubt. Doubt that I am not experienced enough, fast enough, or skilled enough. Yet, at the time of soccer tryouts, on Tuesday, July 28th, 2015, I felt none of these emotions. With my team’s prior success, we promoted to a higher level, overall boosting the morale of my team. As captain, players of my team unanimously voted that I would receive one of the 18 spots on the 2015-2016 team. Tryouts, the one critical factor, stood between that team and me. Transformation and triumph then came into my soccer career, but only after a period of failure.
My pre-calculus teacher walks forward with a large stack of papers and hands me an overturned test - normally a sign of bad results. I flip the packet over and I’m devastated by what I see. On this single math exam, I receive the worst grade I’ve ever had in a class - a 56. At first, I think that everybody failed, and that maybe there’d be a curve. But as my partner receives his test back, I quickly realize I’m wrong.
But 1 week before the tryout I heard that this year its only going to be a 1 day tryout. That made me very nervous because I thought if there was only 1 day the coach would basically have his team pictured out. When tryout came I felt like I did way better then last year and that night I couldn’t go to sleep because I was just thinking about if I was going to make the team. I still remember they posted the result in 2nd hour when I was in history class. All my friends told me that they posted the result and when I went and checked I didn’t see my name on there. At that momentum I was really
In a musty and bleak portable classroom outside of Henry Clay High School, younger me sat and tried to understand the hardest foreign language of all, math. But this tutoring session was different, I was finally going to have a breakthrough and understand something in mathematics.
The start of the 2002 track season found me concerned with how I would perform. After a disastrous bout with mononucleosis ended my freshmen track season, the fear of failure weighed heavily on my mind. I set a goal for myself in order to maintain focus and to push myself like nothing else would. My goal for my sophomore track season was to become a state champion in the 100 meter hurdles. I worked hard everyday at practice and went the extra mile, like running every Sunday, to be just that much closer to reaching my goal. The thought of standing highest on the podium in the center of the field, surrounded by hundreds of spectators, overcame my thoughts of complaining every time we had a hard workout. When I closed my eyes, I pictured myself waiting in anticipation as other competitors names were called out, one by one, until finally, the booming voice announced over the loudspeaker, "...and in first place, your 2002 100 meter hurdle champion, from Hotchkiss, Connie Dawson." It was visions like these that drove me to work harder everyday.
As the first meet neared, things were going well. I made it onto the 4x100 team making me the third fastest kid on the team. The other members of the relay were Jason Schmidt, Jeremy Willard and Rodney Schmidt. Jason and Jeremy were both the top dogs and Rodney and I were second from the bottom of the barrel.
When it was time to warm up I ran a couple of laps around the track. After that, I stretched and started to warm up on the hurdles. The 100 meter hurdles was the first race of the day. When I was done warming up I took off my sweats and went to go get my lane number. I was in lane four. I felt like I’d been waiting forever to run. To make it
Tryouts. Tryouts. Tryouts. Tryouts were in five days for one spot on the varsity basketball lineup. All I could think about twenty four seven was about how I needed to perform on thursday. I was freshman at Calvin Christian high school. If I was able to get on the team I would be breaking Calvin Christian history; never has a freshman been pulled up to varsity before the season. It was sunday afternoon and when most kids are watching football on tv, I had my mom drive me to MVP. MVP is a sports complex in cascade. I had basketball training session at 4:00 with Abdou my trainer.
Don’t practice just to stay in shape. You want to practice hard enough where when it comes to game day its easy. When your preparing for the week in practice make sure you and your teammates are on the same page. That makes a huge difference in the game because if everybody is not on the same page, you have no chance. Everybody has to be on the same