From zero to somewhat athletic

I have never been the stud athlete. Probably never will. I’m short. I’m scrawny. Features that do not accompany star athletes such as LeBron James, Cam Newton or Mike Trout. Those guys are freaks of nature, dominating almost every game they play in. As for me, I was lucky if I got picked for football when I played at recess in elementary school.

If you look at my parents, you can see why I look the way I do. My dad is 5-foot-10 and was never a star athlete although he did a variety of sports. My mom is 5-foot-5 and again never stood out in athletics. She ran cross country in high school but was never a top runner on the team. Definitely not genetics that lean in favor of an athlete. “You really got screwed over in the gene pool,” my dad has told me several times.

Though my athletic ability is slim to none, I still attempted to be a top athlete. My quest led me to a variety of sports; tennis, baseball, flag football, soccer, swimming, track, and cross country. All of which I was a valiant… participant in.

When I started high school I began to focus on two main sports, swimming and cross country. My freshman year, I worked and worked and worked. I still didn’t make varsity. It was not until my sophomore year that I really started to improve. My times for both sports started dropping dramatically, especially for cross country. I made the varsity team for both sports. I was finally a part of the team and, more importantly, I was a major part of the team.

The next years, I gave up swimming to focus on the sport where it seemed impossible for me to go back to mediocrity, cross country. Junior year, I was the No. 3 runner on the team. Senior year came around and I was the top returning runner for the year. Maybe it was finally time for me to be the best. Nope. I was a consistent No. 2 runner for the team and I could not be happier about that.

I never thought I would be on a varsity team in high school, let alone receive money to continue running at Rogers State University. Only about 6 percent of high school cross country athletes go on to compete in the NCAA. And I somehow squeaked into that 6 percent. Sometimes dreams happen, even when you didn’t know it could be a dream.