When I started track freshman year, I was nervous. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to try, so I just picked sprinting. But as the season progressed, my friends were always ranting and raving about high jump.
After practice one day, I spoke to Coach Dai about trying high jumping. He was excited another person would be trying jumping. I thought high jump was exciting, but hard. I enjoyed jumping so much, I started long jumping also. As a sophomore, I decided along with high and long jump, I was also going to try triple jump.
Coach Dai never let me give up when I felt like I couldn’t improve anymore. When I thought I was done in practice, he always made me do more run-throughs to see what I could fix. He believed there was always room to improve posture and foot-work. The practices with Coach Dai weren’t always a breeze, but he was able to make them enjoyable and fun.
It seemed like such a short time and practices would already be over, but most of the time my friends and I would stay later to keep working on our jumps. He became like a friend. He was someone we could look up to. And whenever he sees one of us in the halls, all he talks about is track, which we enjoy so much.
Coach Dai never let anything get you down and he was always trying to boost your self-esteem if you were feeling unsure about your jump. Often times, he would bring us lollipops or popsicle treats for after practice when the weather started getting warm. Getting that reward made me want to try as hard as I could.
Coach Dai taught me many things. One: that I can never give up when things get hard. Two: the more I do something, the better I get (so keep practicing.) And three: life goes on and even if I have a bad jump this week, next week I could have the best jump of the year.
I can’t wait for track to start this year so I can start jumping again.