Personal Narrative- Track Competition

The moment of truth was upon me. The official times, this includes whom qualified for finals, for the 400m relay had been posted. My eyes scanned the page for the bold letters that spell ANDERSON. As I ran my finger across the page to where the times were posted, my ears began to shut out all outside noises, leaving me alone with the thump of my heart and the inhale and exhale of my lungs. Both began to increase in speed as my eyes narrowed in on the time.

My sophomore year had begun and I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to do track this year. Last year I played football in the fall and soccer in the spring. Not really enjoying it, the decision was made to play " real futbol" (soccer) in the fall, leaving the spring sports season open. My friend kept telling me how fun track was, so I decided to give it a try.

As the first meet neared, things were going well. I made it onto the 4x100 team making me the third fastest kid on the team. The other members of the relay were Jason Schmidt, Jeremy Willard and Rodney Schmidt. Jason and Jeremy were both the top dogs and Rodney and I were second from the bottom of the barrel.

The 400 relay was my best event. We placed in every meet and even took home some medals as the season progressed. As the track year rounded for the home stretch, we had only three more meets to compete in: the Tiger Invitational, regionals, and state.

As the Tiger rolled around, there arose a question of whether or not to keep the team together or break it up and give the two seniors a chance to compete in other individual events at regionals. I actually didn't know about this possibility until about five minutes before the race began on Saturday. We were all huddled together preparing for the start. Jeremy came up to Rodney and me and told us that if we didn't do well the team might be dropped. Kicking our motivational drive into high, the four of us focused on only one thing: running the time we all knew we could. Getting into the blocks I felt more ready than ever. At the sound of the gun, I shot out of the blocks. I sprinted around the track, concentrating on making a great hand-off. Everything went smooth and my excitement began to build as I watched Rodney sprint away from me. The other two hand-offs went great and our anchorman, Jeremy Willard, crossed the line in a great position. I remember how light headed I felt as I ran over to the finish line to get our unofficial time from Jeremy. It was by far our best of the year.

Now all that was left was to wait for the sheet of paper with our acu-track times (very accurate times, which are acquired by a laser sight and a camera). I, quite to the contrary of most meets, was not the first person to seek out our much more accurate time. This day, I found myself listening to the excited talk of my good friend Rodney Schmidt, telling me that we had posted a time of 45.19! I ran to tell people, but it seemed like everyone else knew before me. Feeling sure that we had just broken a school record, I ran up to coach just to make sure.

"Hey, coach what's the school record for the 4x100?" I remember asking.

"I do believe it is 45.19, if I'm not mistaken," He replied.

I could feel my heart begin to race and my eyes widened with excitement. I turned to Rodney only to see an expression that probably looked just like mine on his face.

With a great run under our belts we ready for the next meet of the year: the highly anticipated 2A/3A/4A Regionals. For the first time all year, we would be competing against people from only 3A. Although the 2A and 4A regionals are held in the same place, our times are only compared to other 3A competitors.

Regionals is a two-day meet that starts on Friday and ends on Saturday. Only the preliminaries for the shorter, individual events take place on the first day. With nothing much to lose, I ran well and made it to finals in the 100m and 200m dash. With