I couldn’t breathe. If there was ever a time to quit, this was it.
It was an innocent conditioning drill. Two partners raced to a ball at the fifty yard line with incentive to win: the loser ran an extra one hundred yards. My partner was Kelly, one of the fastest girls on the team. It wasn’t long before I was having an asthma attack.
I often imagined myself wearing a varsity jacket with pride, but my field hockey coaches impeded my goal. They humiliated me on the field. They promoted freshmen to varsity and made me the ball girl. They told me I’d “never be more than an okay player.” When I crossed the end line after yet another one hundred yard punishment sprint, I’d long since given up hope on my goal. The dream of a varsity jacket I could wear proudly had degraded to the dream of a varsity letter
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This was more than embarrassment. This was abject humiliation.
I could see my teammates out of the corner of my eye, whispering.
Coach announced to the field: “Let’s see if we can give Kelly a challenge.”
My hands shook with rage. I narrowed my eyes, glaring at the orange ball ahead of me. It suddenly didn’t matter if it was forty-four yards or fifty yards or three miles away. I was going to get there first, or die trying. I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet, wheezing, hiccupping, and waiting.
She blew the whistle.
I clenched my teeth through the pain in my chest and sprinted, sobbing between gasping breaths. I beat Kelly by one step.
Days later, I was finally given one chance to play varsity and prove myself to the same coaches who said I’d never be “more than okay.” It wasn’t long before I was a varsity starter.
I might have waited my whole life and never caught that lucky break necessary to capture my dreams, but it would have been impossible to succeed if I had given up before that chance came my way. There is no such thing as failure. There are only missed