There I am lying in my bed, my body in tangled in the blankets. As I turn my head I slowly open my eyes to see what time it is on the clock. The number reads 6:45a.m. I think to myself “O no I am going to be so late!” I roll out of bed thinking that I had laid my clothes out the night before, as I look around that thought slowly leaves my head. I hear people downstairs, so I yell out “Mom have you seen where I put my clothes, I am running late!” My mom replies,” No honey, but come get some breakfast when you get done.”
In the meantime, here I am it now even later in time than before and I still can’t find my clothes. O wait, what is this underneath this big pile of clothes? Ah ha, finally I have found my clothes, not just any clothes, and the perfect outfit for the first day of my freshman year. Being the first day of school meant a few things for me; one thing was that I was starting a brand new school with new people, today was the day for tryouts for the volleyball team. I was very excited.
As I finally am dressed I run downstairs to see what my mother has made for breakfast. It smelled so good. As I approach the table I see eggs, bacon, toast, and pancakes, all my favorite. I look at the clock it now reads 7:40a.m. and, well see my school start at 8:00a.m. As a freshman I definitely did not want to be late for the first day of class, how would that look? I holler out to my mom;” Breakfast looks great mom, but I have no time to eat, I have to go or I will be late!” My mother replies;”Ok dear have a good day at school, good luck with tryouts and make sure you eat something healthy for lunch.” There I am headed out the door. Wait something is not right, I stand there in the drive for a minute. Ugh, I had forgotten my shoes and my backpack. So I rush upstairs, to the mess I call a room and am frantically looking for these things. I have no luck so I run back downstairs, where my mom is waiting with my shoes and my bag, she laughs a little. “Honey slow down, you will have plenty of time to get there,” she says. I replied, “I know mom but it’s the first day and I don’t want to be late, got to go.” Okay I am ready now.
Meanwhile, I make my way to school, with class list in hand. As I peer around the corner to see where all my classes are the bell is beginning to ring. “That’s not good.” I say to myself as I am trying to rush to class without running. There it is room 101, Government. I take my seat at the back thinking that it is going to be good, because we can sit anywhere, and that meant I did not have to sit my any boys. As the class gets started out teacher does his introduction and lets us know what to expect. Class is almost over and I am still enjoying where I am sitting. That is about to change, our teacher says another thing class is that we will have assigned seat so everyone needs to get up. “O great” I say to myself. As the teacher finally reaches my name I still have some hope that I am going to be placed by no boys. My luck just ran out, not only did I get to sit by a boy but three boys. I had a boy to the right, the left and behind me. I think to myself if this is the worst of today then I will be ok.
Farther on I have gone through half the day with the other classes just flying by and I have been lucky enough that in my other classes I did not have to sit by any boys that I got to sit with my friends. As much of a busy nerve racking day it has been it is finally lunch time. The cafeteria food is not the best, but if you are starving it’s something right. Today has been a great day, minus the boy thing. I have the perfect outfit on, I wasn’t late and only another 3 hours until volleyball tryouts. Here I am walking out of the lunch line, looking around to find a table, I see some people messing around as they walk up to put their trays up. I step back so that I am not in the way, so much for that. One of the people bumped into me and I spill my drink all down the front of my shirt, in spite of everything I was trying to do to avoid something like this. My friends look to me and ask “Are you ok, do you have another shirt?” I reply to them,” Ugh yes I am ok, and no I don’t have another shirt!” I try to not get so mad there is only 3 hours left until tryouts and that is what’s going to make my day. Well after lunch I go to my next classes, with a much stained shirt and everyone asking, “What happened?” I would just say “I don’t want to talk about it.
Furthermore it is the last bell of the day ringing; the clock struck 3:10p.m. School is out, and although I have a stained shirt and had to sit by boys it was still a good day. On the other hand what else could go wrong right? I head to the gym where all the other girls are that are also trying out today. Coach Campbell comes in and tells us,” Girls start your stretches and when you are done you need to run laps.” I look over to the other girls, who are about as interested in the stretches and laps as I am. Here we are down on the floor stretching our bodies until we can’t stretch no more. I think well the hard part is over. Not anywhere near to what I was thinking. Captain of the team says, “Come on girls we need to get these laps down so we can get to practicing and the tryouts.” I am hesitant but I do it.
After a while of running laps we get a little water break and are divided into groups of four. We are divided so that there is someone to set the ball, spike the ball, to practice hits and to practice serves. I am so excited and nervous my hands are all sweaty. It was my groups turn. We did very well with the serves and the hitting. I however am not very good with the setting or the spiking. My coach takes me aside to do individual setting, where you practice setting on the wall. It sounds a little weird right, however it is effective. They also say when you set with your hands to find your window and that you are doing a set properly. I tried and I tried thinking that I did a pretty okay job. Now it was on to spiking. This was not my strong point; I am a little short and never really get much height with the ball. This individual practice does not turn out as well as I had hoped. Presently we all are done with the tryouts, with the group practice and the individual practice. Coach Campbell comes in the room and tells us,” You all have worked very hard today I appreciate you coming out, Now I am going to call you back one by one and let you know if you made it or not.”
Meanwhile I sit here on the cool gym floor waiting patiently, as I watch girl after girl go in that office and come out with a satisfaction of knowing that they have made the team or to see the tears stream down there face as if there world had been crushed. It is almost my turn; I can hardly wait, because I know I just did such a great job. The coach calls me in; I am so nervous, and very quiet. She says to me,” I appreciate you coming today and you did a good job, however you didn’t make the team this year. If you would like you could be the team manager.” My response to this was,” I didn’t make it; I thought I did a really good job, and what does the team manager do?” The coach replies,” Well the team manager carries around the water bottles, fills them, and carries the balls around, would this be something you’re interested in?” I sat there still with a very shocked look on my face. I thought about what she had just said, I wanted to be with the team very badly, yet not as a ball carrier Even though I did not make the team, I did not want to be lowered to someone who get made fun of and everyone knows a ball carrier is someone who had gotten rejected. I did not want what seemed liked the whole world to know that I had been rejected, it’s embarrassing.
For all that, I declined her offer, walked with my head bowed out of the gym, through the halls, and to outside. I found a bench there and sat to reflect on what had just happened. I thought to myself, today was suppose to be the best day every, it was the first day for everything. I have never been told that I had not made the team; I don’t understand why I didn’t.
Therefore that day was the last day that I had ever tried out for sports, I still have the passion for volleyball and I play with friends when I get a chance, but for high school my sports days were over. I couldn’t handle being rejected, and just being told that I was as good as a ball carrier it seemed. Thereafter that point of rejection I decided to find a different thing, class that I was good in and enjoyed as well. I had found that our school had offered Concert Choir. It was a performance choir and that meant a lot of dedication and work. I was ready for this I believed, I had pulled myself together to not be rejected once more. I walked into my music class for the vocal tryouts, where my teacher had said to the class,” You’re going to need to sight read for your audition.” That is something I had not learned yet, coming from a small school. I had confronted the music teacher Mrs. McWhirter, I was trembling with fear that I would be rejected once again. I said to her,” I was never taught how to sight read.” To my surprise she responded, “That’s okay, just follow my voice.” That was the best thing I remember hearing. She had said it was okay, not that I was not good enough, and she had not rejected me. That was the greatest felling to me that day. I ended up staying in Concert Choir the rest of my high school career. With that one teacher giving me that chance I do not fear rejection as much, I still however work as twice as hard to succeed no matter how small the task.