Personal Narrative: Field Hockey

I’ve never been known to be athletic. Most of my friends are quite the athletes and many of them are at D1 schools playing what they’re good at. Typically, athletes begin at a very young age and become skilled at their sport. Unfortunately, I was not raised to be an athlete; my parents never enforced it and at the time I never asked. It bothers me that they never thought of letting me try soccer, basketball, swimming, or gymnastics. However, I took matters into my own hands and tried out for Field Hockey. Picking up a sport at a young age is probably easier than picking it up your sophomore year in high school. I was influenced by many of my friends who I met my freshman year to try out. They had been playing field
I would remind myself about what it felt like not being on the Varsity team. During pre-season I proved to the Varsity coach that I did have what it took to be on the team. My original mile time was ten minutes my sophomore year. That year it was under seven minutes. Coach A was never the one to show any type of emotion but I knew she was proud. After a week of pre-season, we had to have practice indoors because it was raining and it was also the day Coach A had the uniforms out. She told us to stretch out and that meant practice was over. We all sat and stretched out and she said, “Returning varsity from last year, grab your uniform” and once every one had grabbed their uniform she said, “Gabby, you can go pick your number” I had never been so content! It felt amazing knowing that I finally had a spot on a team and even though I’ve never been much of an athlete, I did it. Once the season began, I was ready to play at the varsity level. My JV coach would always try to coach me because he knew that I had potential to be better than what I was demonstrating. I played left forward and playing left forward as a righty wasn’t easy. In order to be good at that position, you had to know where to place your stick at the right time to get a deflection into the goal. Field hockey is a sport in where you have to be aggressive which was what I lacked. The few times that Coach A gave
I never once thought positive about the upcoming year, I felt used and not needed on the team. Most of my friends on the Varsity team were graduating and the only one left was Emily, the all-star. Therefore I could not settle to play like an average plater, I was expected to step up. It was my senior year, why go through all that trouble and quit? I wasn’t sure returning the upcoming season was the best idea but I did it anyway. I could not allow myself to quit knowing I had made it that far. Every day after practice, I would ask Emily to stay and help me whether it was with conditioning or stick work. I had no other option but to step up and help my team. There were finally spots which I could fill in for; the only problem was they were big shoes to fill in. I knew that if I wanted to start this year, I would have to put aside all of my fears and work harder than ever before. In the beginning of the season I did not start. At that point, I was on the verge of just quitting because it was clear that everything I was doing was not working. It wasn’t that my coach didn’t believe in me, it was obvious I didn’t believe in myself. My team and I entered post season undefeated. Our coach always said that depending on how your warm up goes that’s how you will play. My warm up went fairly well that day and my coach decided to put me in. I knew that this game was important