Personal Narrative: Proving Myself

Proving Myself Since the day I was born, I constantly got reminded that my family was amazing at sports, and that my sisters did something many girls have never accomplished by winning state in track and volleyball so many times. I was always told that I too would be great at sports one day, carving out my path to success just like my sisters did. I firmly believed in grade school that I was meant to win every race, and conquer every sport just like my sisters did, which lead to some interesting emotions when winning didn’t happen. My first cross country journey started out my seventh grade year. I had just came off winning the state title in baseball my sixth and seventh grade year, so I thought I was the bomb at everything. This was the

Looking back at it, the shorter length definitely played a factor in making me such a good runner in grade school, while my high school career just basically amounted to nothing. My first meet in grade school I completely shocked the coaches with a time of 11:15 for my first 1.8 mile run. I was the fastest on the team by far, and out of the 100+ runners at that meet, I placed 11th. I was amazed that I could run that fast! I thought that this was super exciting that I had another sport I was good at to add to my arsenal. My coach and parents were super ecstatic and for the rest of my seventh grade year, I dominated the competition. I was winning or placing in the top three almost every single meet. The time had finally come to run the state meet and I was ready. My mom and I had looked on the computer at who was going to be there and what times they were running, and I was ranked in the top three of the state. My mom told me that if I won state, I could get any pair of Oakley sunglasses I wanted at the time, and Oakley sunglasses were my absolute favorite back then. Thinking that I was going to blow away the

Track season my seventh grade year put me in a nice position physically to do well for my upcoming eighth grade cross country season. Most of that summer leading up to my cross country season I spent preparing myself, both mentally and physically, to avoid any disaster like what happened at my first state meet. I am more of a morning person, so I would get up around 6:30 to run every morning before school. This routine definitely put me in the best shape of my life, and pushed my confidence to places it had never been before in cross country. The cross country season had went very well leading up to the climax of the state meet, and I felt like my work was finally beginning to pay off. I still remember to this day being in the car riding up to what was the biggest moment of my life up to that point. I was a nervous wreck on the car ride there, and when I am nervous, people can tell. I just sat there, shaking, looking out the window wondering if that day was going to be the day… and it was, thank god. When we arrived to the state meet my eighth grade year, I was ready for it. As a team, we rode up to where the meet was going to be held, and that gave me a pretty good idea of how the course was going to be run. There was a hill at the very beginning of the race, not boding too well for me because I tend to start out fast and that hill would waste all my energy. Nonetheless, I had an amazing start and