My First Week at John McCrae Highschool

It was my first week at high school and I already absolutely love it! I really enjoy the whole atmosphere. I only have one disappointment. Last year at middle school, I was able to play on every single school sport’s team and was involved in all the activities, but this year I need to stay focused on my training until after the World Championships in March.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my training and I’m extremely excited and proud to be on the National Team. I’m just having some trouble getting used to the idea that I won’t be involved with everything. I feel bad when teachers and coaches who I’ve only known for a few days ask me to try out for their teams and I had to say “no”. I feel like I’m letting them down and I would love to try every sport. I think I have an addiction :). I want to be involved and try new things but for right now I really want to devote almost all my time to training. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s only my first year of there and I will have lots of time later.

I have this one little window of opportunity, to do what I’ve been wanting to do all my life  and I want to go the Worlds with NO REGRETS. I want to know that I’ve done all the training both physically and mentally that I can possibly do between now and then. That way, when I’m standing on the podium in New Zealand, the victory will be that much sweeter and if I’m not, at least I will know that I did my absolute best without second guessing myself.

I also have the responsibility to the other girls for the  “Team Sparring” event  to do everything I can to make sure we do well as a team.  It’s no longer just about competing for myself or by myself. We all need to know that we are committed to doing our best for each other.

I’ll be able to continue with some winter club soccer so I don’t lose my touch to the ball and I’ll be ready for the Spring/Summer season in April. I will practice Taekwon-Do for the rest of my life since to me it’s not a sport. It’s my life. I can’t imagine not doing it. I get grumpy and restless when I haven’t trained in a couple days.  Soccer is something fairly new to me but it’s a sport that I also want to do for the long haul. I love the strategy in both sports. In some ways sparring and soccer are very similar. It’s like a big chess game where you have to see and understand the whole field/ring, anticipate your opponents and have a quick reaction and strategy.

My training went really well this week and I was able to do a bit of kick boxing as well.  My legs were starting to feel really heavy and my arms felt so exhausted.  It’s good conditioning  and a good work out. It really is a complete body work out since you use every single muscle. The next eight weeks of training are going to be a lot more intense leading up to Nationals so I peak at the right time. It’s going to be a hard next month or two, but I’m really excited.

There is definitely more homework in high school so I’ve already been doing homework in the car back and forth to training since it’s a 70km drive.  I had really great teachers last year so I even used some of their math websites for review.  It’s so cool how there are good on-line tutorials to help out.  I know I’ll miss a lot of class time this year so it’s important for me to stay on top of things.