Describe A Mentor
My definition of a mentor is a trusted and experienced advisor. A mentor is someone who trains a younger person so they can succeed. The mentor I have selected is Ray Broomhall. He was the Head Coach for the Nordic Ski Team at Mountain Valley High School. Ray was not only my coach but my father’s coach when he was in high school on the Nordic ski team. He was my Nordic Ski coach in 4th and 5th grade and then he was my coach all four years of high school. Even when I was racing on the middle school, Ray would still be coaching me even though he was the high school coach. He came back my senior year even after the Athletic Director forced him to resign the year before because the AD wanted a different coach. He never found one so Ray came back
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He changed my perception of the race courses. That no race course was the same as another and that you could be on the same course but it’s not the same as it was the day before and that conditions are always changing and you have to be able to adapt to the different environments that a course may have. Ray made sure my training was tough and demanding. On average I was skiing 15-20 kilometers a day at practice. He had me do a hill workout somedays, just going up and down and back around to the steepest and longest hill on the course we trained on at Black Mountain. There was no weather condition that I wouldn’t have trained or practiced in if I was able to. He wouldn’t let me take a practice off but anyone else on the team could. He pushed me to be the best. Ray put me in a college race when I was a junior in high school to challenge me and show that I still had a lot of room for improvement when it came to my stamina and speed when I’m racing. I had already had the goal to beat my older brother’s record of winning Skimeister two years in a row at both MVCs and States. I wanted to win it three times in a row. He only added to the motivation by telling me if I accomplished my goal that I would be the second person in state history to do it. The Athletic Director at the time confirmed it. So that just gave me more motivation to accomplish my goal. The successes I have achieved because of Ray was winning Skimeister 3 years in a row at MVCs and States. Ray trained the only other person to accomplish winning 3 years in a
He changed my perception of the race courses. That no race course was the same as another and that you could be on the same course but it’s not the same as it was the day before and that conditions are always changing and you have to be able to adapt to the different environments that a course may have. Ray made sure my training was tough and demanding. On average I was skiing 15-20 kilometers a day at practice. He had me do a hill workout somedays, just going up and down and back around to the steepest and longest hill on the course we trained on at Black Mountain. There was no weather condition that I wouldn’t have trained or practiced in if I was able to. He wouldn’t let me take a practice off but anyone else on the team could. He pushed me to be the best. Ray put me in a college race when I was a junior in high school to challenge me and show that I still had a lot of room for improvement when it came to my stamina and speed when I’m racing. I had already had the goal to beat my older brother’s record of winning Skimeister two years in a row at both MVCs and States. I wanted to win it three times in a row. He only added to the motivation by telling me if I accomplished my goal that I would be the second person in state history to do it. The Athletic Director at the time confirmed it. So that just gave me more motivation to accomplish my goal. The successes I have achieved because of Ray was winning Skimeister 3 years in a row at MVCs and States. Ray trained the only other person to accomplish winning 3 years in a