My Athletic Success Story

Email To a Friend 12 June 2009 My name is George and I am a freshman at Dukes of York High School in Brighton. I was originally interested in enrolling in here because of the outstanding athletic reputation that this school has and I was primarily interested in joining the cross-country team. I tried out for the team and was excited to land a spot, representing this legendary team.

I have been in a track program over the summer and had been successful in competitions, so I thought I would be a natural, transitioning into cross-country. My family and my girlfriend were equally as excited as I was to hear that I made the team and would start practicing next week. I brought my girlfriend to practice because we had plans to hang out afterwards. I was pleasantly surprised when I started getting all of these crazy looks from my teammates before practice began.

They were already in their tracksuits, stretching and warming up and I thought I was 20 minutes early. My girlfriend was on the bleachers doing homework and drinking coffee while I was changing. While warming up, my girlfriend was approached by the coach and told to leave. She was being quite and doing no harm so I didn’t understand why she w as dismissed from the practice session as she was waiting for me to be done. It was explained to me that practices were closed to non-players and at that moment I realized that I had a lot to learn.

As I continued in practice, I was blown away by how militant and hardcore this team was. There was no laughing, joking, resting or slacking. I had to give 200% at every practice and had to re-structure my whole life to accommodate my commitment to this team. After our first game of the season, I started to understand the reason why the coach was so harsh and why I had to alter my lifestyle. We totally annihilated the other team and won every game we played. I guess it is a good thing that I became more disciplined. I have gained complete respect for the program and am glad that the expectations are set so high. I know that I am becoming a better, stronger person, and look forward to being the best that I could be.

George Silva, Essex.

Bookmark this: