Personal Narrative Essay: Growing Up Wrestling

In 2013 I joined the varsity wrestling team. I had never wrestled, and I was not not physically fit, but I wanted to try something new and challenging. I learned the basics of wrestling and competed within two weeks of my first training. I was inexperience and there were many things I did not know, but I worked hard to defeat my opponents and become fit and agile. By the end of the season I wrestled my way into the regional competitions.

This final year we were determined to do anything in our power to make it to the final championship round. For three years our team was able to make it to the semifinals, but always fail to advance to the final championship game. Before the semi-final game coach Jen had said, "go out there and show the other team that you won 't go down without a fight." That 's exactly what we did, we went out and played the hardest we ever played before. For the first time ever our team Advanced to the final championship round.

But during my sophomore year in high school, everything didn’tseem togo the way I wantedto be.And it was because of the injury I had, my life completely change since. This long story begins with a goal that I made for myselfduring my freshman year in high school; I wanted to play high school basketball for four years straight, and this goal seems pretty neat for me.Because Texas is a very competitive state for both basketball and football, so making it to the team is not easy. I went to ahigh schoolthat was ranked

I played two sports in high school. My soccer team won 6 games my entire high school so obviously we were not very good but i still had so much passion for the sport. The other sport I played in high school was Softball. But for softball we were actually amazing. My junior year in softball everybody was scared to play us because we were scary good.

During the summer before my freshmen year of high school, one of the most significant changes in my life occurred: I moved from the busy, populated city of Arlington, Texas to the rural, “all- white” Jackson County, Tennessee. Believe it or not, the first three words that I heard during my first day attending Jackson County High School were, “Are you Asian?” Shortly after my first appearance, I was given the nickname Chow, which has stuck throughout my entire high school incumbency. At first I was really unsure of how I felt about this name, and many of my teachers worried that I would be offended by it. However, as I ventured from being the new kid in town to getting to know most of the people in this “all- white” county, I’ve come to embrace

. .”) when I was even younger than that. I coached the sport for like eighteen years straight until Mr. Daly, our recently retired athletic director, talked me into taking over the girls’ basketball program. For Pete’s sake, I still PLAY the game. The Rebels, my team in the Pioneer Valley Over-Thirty Baseball League, won its second championship in four years a couple weeks ago, and I played shortstop and third base, pitched a little and batted cleanup most games.

I started playing football in 8th grade, but the real work began when I got to varsity football. It began in the spring after my freshman year. Because so many people on the team were older and stronger than me, I became very intimidated and even contemplated quitting football. When I told

Have you ever had a passion for something that you love so much that you keep on doing it no matter what time of the season it is? For me that was going to club wrestling at Coe College to practice for two months. My Dad, and my wrestling coach Jeff Voss suggested that it would be a good idea to go to these practices. I didn 't want to at first, but then I thought that if I do the practices I will get better. Also I didn’t want to do track.

Ever since freshman year, I joined the sport of powerlifting but it wasn 't until junior year that it got intense for me. My powerlifting season had been nearing its end, but there was a slight chance to keep on going. Regionals had been coming up and it was a goal of mine throughout the year. The day came to where I was going to be able to lift. The last and very

Thats makes you feel like you went far enough to please other people. You can’t be complacent in the sport of wrestling because that 's where things go wrong. What i’m saying is that the week leading up to semi-state has to be very focused. Freshman of any sport is very hard because it 's your first year of “high school athletics.” You have to learn how to go hard in practice. My freshman year of wrestling was alright and what I mean by that is that it wasn 't the best.