“First call girls 100M high hurdles,” Booms over the intercom. The tingling feeling of Adrenaline is already taking over my whole body. I make my way across the infield to warm up. Now, all I am is focused. I scan the entire football field for a spot to stretch and warm up. All around I see runners from opposing teams. My competition. The North West corner of the football field was all mine to warm up. High knees halfway and butt kickers back up. With strides in between. Blood flowing and my heart racing, with my body feeling pumped, I knew I was ready to run my most important event.

“Second call girls 100M high hurdles.” sounds over the intercom once again. Almost time. My body gets even more excited and is overflowing with Adrenaline. I make my way over to the starting line, where the official is waiting for all the girl hurdlers to gather to be placed in their lanes and heats.

“Final call, girls 100M girls high hurdles.” echos for the last time across the field. The elderly official rises slowly from his chair and announces the names of the hurdlers and tells them their lane and heat assignments. Heat four and lane four was assigned to me. Perfect. Fast lane, fast heat. So, as I impatiently wait for the other heats to finish ahead of mine. I wander to the back of the 100M stretch and do some last minute warm ups and stretches. Finally my heat was up next. The girls of my heat and I make our way to the starting line to set up our blocks and position them in our lanes. Blocks set, ready to start. I get down in my blocks and do a few blocks starts to make sure my blocks are set correctly. With the measures of 45 degrees to 90 degrees leg angles. I stand in front of my blocks as I do jitter dances and bounce around to relieve some Adrenaline trapped inside my body. Waiting on those three commands.

“Okay ladies get into your lanes.” the official says sternly into the megaphone. He gently puts his headphones over his ears, then as he walks toward to his designated starting area he loads the blank into the starting gun.

“Good luck ladies.” he bellows.The cheering all around falls dead silent.

“Runners to your mark.” I jumped up and down a few times before I lower my body to my blocks, my fingers as well as the other hurdlers fingers inch up to the solid white starting line, perfectly alined.

“Set!” All butts rise into a parallel position. I stare downward at the white line. Waiting. Listening for the gun to be shot.

“POP!”

Away we all go. Racing to the finish. Eight lanes, eight girls, ten hurdles, one winner. We are all in the battle, for the glory of winning first. As I sprint down the 100M stretch, I gain more and more speed. A three step kadence. Perfect. Passing girls one by one. Soaring over the hurdles. Fast and quick. Just another girl and I down the final stretch and last few hurdles to go. Shoulder to shoulder. Neck to neck. The crowd getting louder and louder as we inch our way to the finish line. So close to the finish, two hurdles left. I dig deep with my toes. Very deep. Last hurdle to go. Dead sprint with all of the energy I have left and finish with a deep lean. The best feeling ever, is over.

I jog back to the finish line with the other hurdlers of my heats. We all congratulate one another. When we all arrive to the line, we all wait patiently for our placing sticks. All of us filled with anticipation, to know what place we got. People walk in front of us and stop holding a placing stick in their hands. All at the same time they hand us our sticks and tell us good job. The number one was written in red ink on the top of my stick. I smile so big as I look into my hand at the stick and concentrated on that red number. When we were dismissed and congratulated once more, exhausted and still catching our breaths we walk one by one to the placing table.

As I walk to the placing table to hand off my stick, all I was feeling was complete happiness. When I arrive to the table I stated my name and handed the ladies working the table my placing stick. They both told me with the sweetest voices "Congratulations." I say thank you with the biggest smile on my face. I venture back to the starting line to collect my warmup cloths. My teammates come from left and right, congratulating me on my win.

Being a hurdler gives you the wings you lack when you are soaring over the hurdles one by one. The 100M hurdles is my most important event in track and is my biggest passion.