Personal Narrative: Starlites

Hundreds of people in the crowd all chanted “Starlites! Starlites!” the music pounded in our ears. What made us the most nervous, however, were the other teams, from all over the country, their eyes burning into us, watching our every move. Many of the teams were composed of girls from different racial ethnic backgrounds. In the beginning I felt these girls were judging us because we were from the border or because we were Mexican. In the end however, I learned that they are genuinely kind people. We had ten minutes to warm up before we competed, and while we were doing our last run-through of our routine, our rivals that happen to be a different race stood in front of us to watch. More than half of them gave us dirty looks and one busted out in laughter. After we finished our run-through we stood there in awe by their reaction and began to contemplate if we were good enough to win. We all went to drink water and saw that we were next in line to compete already! Their team was placed behind ours, so they would have a front row seat

Our rivals sat right across from us on the mat smiling at us as we were still impatiently waiting. It was us and them meaning that if we get second place it basically means we got last place. Even with all of that on our mind, we still were confident enough to tell them good luck. The judge announced, “And in second place with only a 2 point difference with first place is… Starlites!” We went up to accept our trophy and one of the girls from the rival team told us not to leave yet. The judge had announced them as the first place winners, and as they went to accept their trophy they handed it to us. Everyone was in shock including us, and we had asked them why they were giving it to us; they told us that they were trying to be competitive but took it too far. The whole time my team and I thought they were being mean because we are Hispanic, but that wasn’t the