As most of you who cross paths with me, you would know that I am an athlete at heart, my life revolves around sports leaving me with not much time to socialize and also leading to others knowing me as an introvert teen girl in high school who is shy, quiet and is never into big group gathering. I have told you about gymnastics and all the juicy details there. You can say that is where my journey in being an athlete started, but along the way many other sports have sprung my eye and touched my heart.
One may ask how I have time to balance out school and time to do sports, as well as other curricular activities, well sometimes I don’t even know, it just happens, and there is no looking back, you can’t go that far- to only go that far. To be an athlete you have to be willing to make that commitment in knowing it may interfere with whatever you have going on in life. In order to do anything really, for example: commiting to the job of being a police officer, you have to know the risks, you have to know the training and you have to know whether or not that is the right job that you want to commit to. Ask yourself- Do I really want to deal with all these different scenarios, Do I really want this. If you answer yes well then that is your dream job. Sometimes becoming a police officer can be life changing and life saving at the same time, every police officer I have chatted with love their job.
In my situation, it is the fact that choosing to become an athlete has saved my life. Yeah I may complain about my muscles being sore from the training but when I entered the athlete world I already knew you had to be on top of your game. You have to train your muscles to be strong enough for everything in gymnastics, it may take a lot of ice time to master something in figure skating, you definitely might not be the star soccer player of the team when you first step foot on that field but it takes time. Something humans seem to programmed to not want to hear is “it takes time, everything takes time.” In some scenarios, time is the biggest thing that you could ever battle. Entering the athlete world, I made that choice to put in many hours of training on the ice to master my waltz jump, in the athlete world I made that decision to put in all those hours of soccer drills and rainy days on the soccer field. When I entered the athlete world I made that decision to deal with clicking and cracking bones for the rest of my life.
Why? because the feeling of flying is pretty darn great.
When you become an athlete, it is going to be a long journey before you can train your mind to feel successful because as the scientists say it’s in our DNA or in the back of our mind to remember that when we are training we should strive for something further than our goals. Our coaches have always told us “good is not enough” or practice like you’ve never won and perform like you have never lost. It is definitely going to be rough when you join because most likely you will be placed in a group where there is people that have been doing the sport for years and you are going to start putting yourself down and go through a lot of patches of self doubt. I totally understand you because there was a time where I would sit on the ground and think to myself “they are better, that means I’m not good enough, there is no point in trying” Oh no no don’t give up now darling you will be there one day and then you will be teaching the newcomers. You just have to keep your head up and keep trying.
I’m going to tell you a small story on figure skating. If you are new to me then you would not know that I have been in figure skating for almost 3 years. I joined my grade 9 year. The funny thing is that figure skating has always been a dream of mine since I was a little girl. I have always loved watching the routines with all the fancy jumps and spins. All the figure skaters make it look so easy and calming. Of course I never knew how much training it takes to be a figure skater. I knew that as an athlete you have to stay on top of your game in working out, building that muscle required, eating healthy and sleep enough in order to maintain energy.I did not know how much training figure skating took as a whole.When I joined figure skating I had to use rental skates and not the ones from my coach but good thing I was only in canskate and wasn’t actually doing any jumps other than a simple two foot jump.
I was in canskate for about a year, and the next summer. The summer before I was in grade 10 I moved up to canfigure level which is where I started my waltz jump and a few other spins. I was able to start renting skates from my coach. This was the year that we had our Biannual skating carnival. From the start I was never supposed to be in it because I had too many injuries but I think a month before I decided I was going to join. I practiced my number until the week of perfectly, but literally the week of I got so nervous because we had our number announced by someone in the booth and we had our costumes on and everything. Also when they said “Here’s the men in black canfigure girls” or whatever announcement they had down, it made my stomach drop.
The fact I got to participate in that, that is just a big example in why I became an athlete. That is my dream and I am going to keep living to it.
Whatever your purpose in life is, just remember the sky is your only limit. I don’t know whether it is your job or sports or post secondary, just keep fighting.
You have to fall before you can fly- Ariana Berlin
Here are a few screenshots of me being in The Men in black number with my 3 other fellow canfigure girls. On this night I was known as Agent M .
The sky is the only limit, keep hustling until you give someone a reason to be jealous
