I glanced up at the clock for about the twentieth time that hour. It was only 10:04; I squirmed around in my seat. I NEEDED it to be 10:10, that’s when my team and I got to leave school for our ski meet, my very first High School race. My excitement was overwhelming, my teacher sounded just like the one from the Charlie Brown cartoons. I couldn’t pay attention at all; my eyes kept looking over at the clock. 10:09… eh, that’s close enough. My hand shot up, waving the pink exit slip franticly in the air.

“Can I go now? I have a pass.”

Obviously annoyed that I had just interrupted the class discussion, my teacher waved me off and the entire class watched me sprint out the door. I ran down the hallways and out the main doors where my dad was waiting for me in a car packed full of ski gear, ready to shuttle me to Pine Knob.

Arriving at the ski hill, I carried close to double my body weight in equipment through the double doors and to Clarkston’s corner of the lower cafeteria. As the rest of my team arrived we started getting dressed and gearing up. I became nervous and my stomach started to turn, but soon enough we were out on the hill prepping for our race. After warming up we patiently waited with at least a hundred other racers for them to announce the start of the race. The uneasy feeling in my stomach became worse and after a few minutes they announced for the first flight of skiers to line up at the starting gates. Girls on the right course and boys on the left, because as Coach Bruce from Cranbrook always says “Girls are always right.”

When the first skier left the start house everything became so much more real. My heart began beating fast and I could feel my body temperature rise. I looked over at Callie with wide eyes.
“Dude I can’t do this.”
I grabbed her shoulders and shook them violently.
“I CANT DO IT.”
She then took hold of my hands, took them off her shoulders and brought them back down to my sides. She let out a laugh,
“Hah, you kind of have to. And you’re next flight, so… I would get ready.”
It was the most unsympathetic response and one hundred percent correct. My heart pace started to slow and I became calmer. They eventually called my flight and I stripped off my coat and shorts reducing myself to a thin spandex race suit. It was then that I realized how freezing it was, and that thought distracted me from the nervousness.

It all happened very fast; the wait, the race, and the finish. It was unemotional besides the fear. The next thing I knew, we were all flying back to the lodge to avoid freezing to death. We all huddled inside and gossiped about what had just happened while we waited around in our long socks and under armor for our coaches to bring back the results sheets. None of us thought much of it, it was only a JV race, just a practice for the Varsity one that would occur the next day, but it was life changing for us freshmen that had never experienced an actual High School ski race before. The tension, the amount of racers, it was all new and so extremely exciting.

When our coach finally came back with the score sheets, we crowded around and listened as he read off the scores. None of us expected much of ourselves; we didn’t know where we stood as High School racers yet. This race didn’t mean very much to me because it was only Junior Varsity, but when my coach said first place and my name in the same sentence it became very important to me. My face lit up and my smile became uncontrollable. The confidence boost that it gave me might have almost been too much, but it was just what I needed, it was amazing. It made a single event that started out meaning to little to me, and turned it into a time that I’ll never forget as long as I live. It motivated me to become better, I’ll always want to feel that important again and especially at a varsity level. If that hadn’t happened to me, I don’t think I would have seen the potential I have, or have been motivated to try my hardest and become better.