Becoming an Athlete

Something I’ve really been thinking about lately is my desire to assistant coach middle school throws.  So tonight, while scrolling through my list of “blog topics” I want to write about, my eye rested a little longer than normal on the one about my athletic history.  I thought I could try my hand at writing out the story of how this pudgy, big-boned Mexican became an athlete.

Let me start by saying that I was never, ever in a club sport, little league, or after-school dance, soccer, basketball, or anything else-team.  My reasoning behind this is that my parents were both from Mexico; new to the county, they didn’t know what Little League was.  My parents both grew up on ranches.  They lived simple lives in rural, deep-down, nitty-gritty Mexico, and didn’t have any luxuries, so club sports were unheard of.  Thus, my sister and I never experienced the stereotypical soccer mom, after-school rush. 

Most of my youth, I spent rather inactive.  The most exercise I got was walking a lap at Smucker Park in Yuma, Arizona with my mom every once in a while.  I remember in 5^th grade, my dad started taking my sister and I out in the mornings before school with the dogs, in an effort to speed up our pre-adolescence metabolisms that were contributing to our expanding waistlines.

I was always big.  I was wearing training bras in second grade.  I was always, ALWAYS, top row, center in every class picture.  I was 5’4” and weighed 134 pounds in 4^th grade, and 5’6 ½” and weighed 186 pounds at the beginning of sixth grade.  I remember being embarrassed to eat in front of my peers, beginning in 5^th and 6^th grade, and continuing on through 9^th grade. 

But, in the spring of 6^th grade, spring of 2000, something happened.  Twice a week, during PE class, we completed a warm-up lap around the playground, probably totaling about 300 meters or so.  I think most everyone tried their hand at jogging this lap, but nobody ever stuck with it.  It became routine that my friend Cecilia and I were the only two people in the entire class jogging that lap.  We jogged the whole way around, and would wait 5 to 10 minutes before everyone else was done.  I remember I started stretching out that semester, after I hit puberty.  And I kept jogging those laps.  I think I felt this burning desire to prove myself to my peers.  I was tired of them laughing at me.  I wanted to be like everyone else, and like no one else at the same time.  I wanted to do more.  I wanted to be better than everyone walking the lap. 

What I didn’t know was that this simple act was the beginning of my athletic career. 

I remember the school formed a softball team that spring, and I kind of wanted to participate, but I didn’t.  I didn’t know anything about softball, I was too nervous to learn more or to ask my parents, plus you had to buy a whole bunch of equipment I had no idea about.  So I didn’t play.

That fall, I tried out for my first athletic team: 7^th grade basketball.  I remember spending my fall break in the gym, running, sweating, learning, trying.  I still remember my first free throw.  It was, as we say nowadays, an epic fail.  It sort of drifted limply out of my hand and didn’t even make it halfway to the basket.  I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  The only thing I understood was running up and down the court.  Running the sprints was my favorite part of tryouts. 

I did not make the team.  I was angry.  I was hurt.  I was upset that my fall break had gone to waste.  So what did I do? I marched back into the gym and looked at the tryout list for the rest of the school year.  I found the dates for the track team.  I said, “Fine; I will do track.  They don’t cut anyone from the track team.”

That was, unknowingly, the most pivotal decision of my life up to that point!  I went out for the track team that spring and threw the shot put for the first time (in Arizona, junior high doesn’t throw discus).  I liked it.  I tried high jump.  I failed at it.  I tried running some 800’s and some 400’s.  Something interesting about my city was that there were weight classes for junior high.  They were called “A’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s”.  The A’s were the big girls; the D’s were the tiny girls.  I was an “A”, and I won a few 400m runs here and there.

I had now entered the world of the athlete, in which, at least in junior high, if you were good at one sport, you must be good at them all.  I proceeded to try out for and make the soccer team and volleyball team that 7^th grade year.  I didn’t really like volleyball, but felt pressure to get better at it.  I remember the coach made me nervous.  I ended up taking myself off the team because I got a “D” in algebra one quarter.  I have never quit anything since.

Just before the school year ended, we had a really cool substitute in our English class.  Her name was Mrs. Fahl, and she told us stories of her basketball playing days, showed us her college rings, and inspired us to be better.  She was then hired on as a PE teacher, and came to me and encouraged me to sign up for Summer League basketball.  I told her I had not made the team, but she told me she would work with me and I could get better.  I asked permission from my dad and signed up. 

That summer, I fell in love with basketball, with hard work, with running up and down the court, and with being on a team.  We won one game that summer, but Coach Fahl worked with me on hookshots, layups, and free throws until I could at least fake confidence in myself.  She also inspired me to use my size on the court, and planted the “defense seed” in my brain.  It was very rare that anyone ever got around me on the court. 

By this time, I had slimmed down to about 170 pounds.  I had started to develop my muscles, and was gaining confidence.  I will never forget that I never, ever attempted softball.  It was always the first sports season of the year in junior high, and sometimes I think if I had played in 6^th grade, I could have been a year-round athlete in junior high.  But, I waited patiently for basketball season. 

This time when I tried out, I made the team.  Coach Fahl was the new 8^th grade girls’ coach.  Coach Foote, the 7^th grade coach, couldn’t believe how much I had improved.  After basketball season, I repeated my pattern of the year before: track, soccer, and volleyball, this time, completing my volleyball season.

I also participated in Summer League basketball again. 

During the last semester of junior high, Cecilia, my friend from 6^th grade that I ran laps with, said she was running “cross-country” in high school, and that I should too.   By this time, I had already decided that I wanted to attend the private Catholic high school in town, had applied, and been accepted.  I asked Cecilia to explain what cross-country was, and she said it was “running miles”.  I said I would do it.

So that summer, I ran my first 30 minute run with Coach Farr.  When he said, “We just ran about 3 miles”, I didn’t even really know what that meant.  But it was the beginning of a beautiful high school athletic career. 

For four years, I ran cross-country in the fall, played basketball in the winter, and did track in the spring.  My main event was the shot put, and I started learning the discus as a freshman.  Occasionally, Coach Farr would throw me in the 2-mile run at track meets, if he needed someone extra to knock somebody else’s girls out of the running.  He would only ever do this when it didn’t interfere with my throwing events. 

I also took “girls’ PE for athletes” my sophomore, junior, and senior years as an elective.  Most of my peers asked, “Didn’t you already take PE? Why are you doing it again?” My answer? “I have to do it for track.”

I knew inside my heart that being strong and being healthy was not just a fad for me.  I knew that what most people considered a workout, I laughed at.  I knew that I lived for running 5 miles at a time.  I knew that the road trips we had to take to compete for all three of my sports were where I found my peace.  Because we were the private school, we didn’t have a league in town, so we had to travel a minimum of 2 hours for every competition, during cross-country and track seasons.

It didn’t take long to catch on that I was serious about my sports.  So serious in fact, that it left me little time to socialize with people who weren’t on my teams.  I consider this a blessing now because it kept me too busy to make some of the really awful and dangerous choices that most of my peers were making (drinking, having sex, etc).  I was focused: school and sports. 

My senior year of high school set the direction of the rest of my life.  I was recruited to be on the track team and run cross-country at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas.  I visited the campus with my mom, signed my letter of intent, and put down my enrollment fee all in one visit, over my spring break.  In the fall of 2006, I moved to college and began the next phase of my athletic career.    

While there are many fond, specific memories I have of each sport I have participated in over the years, I believe those are for another time.  For now, I leave you with the thought that something can indeed come from nothing.  For me, discovering my athletic abilities helped me piece together my future, and continues to inspire me to this day. 

More to come on my collegiate career.