Coming of Age 2: The Great Scare

It was my senior year of high school and the end of the first semester was quickly approaching. At the same time, the State Cross-Country Championship was coming up in a week. I was the team captain and we had high hopes that year. The four other runners and I that would be representing our school were all extremely talented and we though we had a serious shot at winning for the first time in school history. However, there was a problem. While we had been preparing for this meet for the past 3 months, I was at the time going to be ineligible to go because I was failing my English class.

I could not believe how stupid I was. The whole semester I had been slacking in this class — showing up late, not completing assignments on time, and disregarding the assigned readings. I could have easily been making an ‘A’ but my laziness had actually caused my grade to drop below a 70, the required grade for passing. UIL rules prevented me from running if I could not raise my grade. When my coach found out, he was beyond furious. This was a guy who I had been coached by for the past four years and we had developed a really close relationship. Over the past four years, he had always loved the effort that I put in and my hard work ethic. However, when he found out that I would be ineligible to run, I had never seen him so disappointed and furious. I was letting my whole team down. The way cross-country races work is that you send 7 runners to race, the top 5 scores for your team count. Add the total scores (quantified by the place your finish) and the team with the lowest score wins. Since there was a big drop off between our 5^th and our 6^th fastest, even loosing one runner could destroy our chances at winning. I was not only letting down my coach and myself, I was letting down my entire team. I had to do something.

In the week leading up to semester’s end, I had to find a way to raise my cumulative grade over ten points. That meant that I not only had to ace the midterm, but needed to complete a multitude of missed homework assignments to try and salvage any points I could. After taking the mid-term, all I could do is, sit, wait and hope that I got a high enough grade. I have never been so nervous about a test. I could not believe that I had let it get to this point. As I logged on and checked my grades, I promised myself that I would never let something like that happen again. Thankfully, I was able to make a good enough grade on the mid-term to raise my semester average above passing. I grew up that day and developed a much greater understanding of the importance of keeping up with my work.