The puck was in my defensive corner. I was playing right wing, but my defensemen were caught on a change so I was responsible for picking it up. That was when I made the mistake. I slowed down and looked back to assess where the forechecker was. Those milliseconds I had just lost allowed him to catch up. He was clearly bigger than me. I was 5’3, maybe 110 pounds and he looked like he was at least 5’9 and 160 pounds. And then I made the fatal mistake. As I was picking up the puck, I looked back up the boards to see where he was.
BAM I was down. I could just make out a quiet cracking sound, but I had no time to think about it because all of a sudden, I felt a shooting pain up and down my shoulder. The referee, underestimating the severity of the check, let the play continue. Slowly, I got up and skated back towards the boards. I sat out a couple of shifts and then ventured to go back on the ice, the adrenaline blocking out the pain and deceiving me as to the severity of the injury.
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My grades, already pretty good, improved and so did my SSAT scores. I got perfect scores on all of my tests which helped me get all A’s. I was happy to see that at least there was something slightly positive that came from such pain, boredom, and an ability to play sports. But, don’t get me wrong I was more than happy with my previous grades and would have easily given up the new improvements to have a functioning arm and the ability to play just one more game with my team-mates. That being said, those improved grades definitely helped me with my application and it’s possible that they made the difference between me being accepted and rejected from Andover. Looking back on the incident from an optimistic standpoint, it wasn’t completely negative. Making something positive from such a negative experience really allowed me to understand the saying: when a door is closed, a window