PROJECT 1
2023 African u18 Athletics Champs
One last attempt. That was all that stood between me and my 2023 goals. The bar stood at 2.10 meters, not just gold for South Africa, but also a chance at a new personal best. I knew the stadium was roaring with passion, but in that moment, all I heard was silence. My hard work had almost been wasted in the competition at 1.90 meters, where I scraped by on my third attempt. The African U18 Championships were huge, and I was there, only sixteen years old, facing a bar higher than I had ever jumped, carrying the hopes of my country on my shoulders. But the journey getting here was anything but easy.
As a young South African high jumper, my dream was always to compete for my country. That is why I was so excited to be competing in my first international competion, however the journey to Zambia started off as one to remember and ended as one to forget. After an early morning flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, another athlete and I landed safely in time for my first ever Team South Africa meeting, where my first challenge arose, getting to know the team. Being the shy sixteen year-old I was, this was the scariest thing ever as I arrived knowing no one, trying to figure out who was the least intimidating person to speak to. Little did I know, that was only the beginning.
Leaving Johannesburg for what should have been a short journey to Ndola, Zambia, turned out to be one of the longest of my life. Landing in Lusaka for our connecting flight was where everything went south. The team managers looked towards each other not knowing what the next move was. So, we sat. And sat. And sat some more in an airport with nothing, no food, no Wi-Fi, nothing at all. Eventually someone showed up to help with two options to choose from: either we do a five-hour bus drive or wait another hour and take a 45-minute flight. The obvious choice to would be to wait and then taking the flight, so that is what we decided to do. Now all we could do was wait and hope that we made the correct choice, playing hand tennis to keep our minds distracted and bodies warm.
After an hour passed, we started I get slightly nervous, but I stayed composed. When another hour passed, confusion and frustration spread across everyone in the team. Not knowing what the next move was, I decided to ask the team managers if we were going to wait even longer.
“No, Luke, we are getting a bus to a hotel for the night and will have this all sorted in the morning,” said one of the team mangers.
I had a small sense of relief knowing I could sleep in a bed that night, but with that relief came stress.
“So, what about our flight?” I asked.
“You don’t need to worry about that, it will be waiting for us in the morning,” they said.
When we finally reached the hotel for the night all I wanted was any sort of food and sleep. Luckily, we were able to eat at the hotel, but when it came to sleeping arrangements, a few unexpected problems were in-counted. One issue being that there were not enough rooms for our entire team, forcing some of the team to go back to the airport and sleep the night there. I was fortunate to get a bed, but even with that came struggles.
Just as I was about to lie down, “Can everyone please meet now!” shouted the managers.
My eyes, heavy with bags, could hardly stay open. So, I went down to hear what they had to say.
“We are going to go back to the airport now as there is a flight waiting for us” they said.
Now keep in mind we have been here for only about 2 hours. This made me slightly skeptical, but we all listened and headed back to the airport.
After everything had gone wrong, we had finally boarded our flight and landed in safely in Ndola. The whole team is exhausted and all we wanted was to sleep, as some of us athletes were competing the following day. At the final hotel, the last hurdle occurred, again there was not enough rooms, causing some of the athletes to move to a different hotel.
With that exhausting journey finally behind me I collapsed in my bed, adamant to get some rest for the biggest competition of my life.
I woke up around 9 AM the next morning very well rested from that super long day of traveling. I was feeling slightly sick yet putting that green and gold kit on for the first time getting ready for the biggest competition of my life was something I have never been so excited about.
Walking through the tunnel, entering the stadium was something so unbelievable I couldn’t believe it. I was standing there, the size, the energy, the noise, everything about that atmosphere created some sort of fear. But also gave me this fire inside me ready to win the gold medal.
The early jumps went by very quickly, but when I got to that 1.90 meters, I got slightly nervous as I knocked the bar off on both my first and second attempt. But with my third attempt, I cleared the bar by miles which brought my confidence back up. My first and second jump at 2.10m were decent and progressively got better. I knew that I had it in me to clear it on my third attempt.
I stood at the end of that runway staring down the bar, not being able to hear anything around me. I started my run up. Stride after stride I eventually took off from the ground, flying in the air, I knew I’d done it. I landed on the mat and with so much excitement I ran straight to the crowd of something African who had backed me the whole way. The whole stadium roared with noise and this brought chills down my spine. I took a moment to register what I had just done and it was not just winning a gold medal and getting a new personal best, but I actually proved that pressure didn’t break me and rather I used that pressure to be able to achieve something spectacular. Not only for myself or my family, but my entire country.
Something to take away is that no matter the circumstances, or the struggles, it doesn’t stop your potential. Nor does it stop what you are destined to achieve, and if you put the hard work in, anything as possible. No matter the struggles or pain.
Reflection
Working on project one really helped me improve my writing skills as I’ve never really been a great writer. At first I kind of just thought it would be about retailing my experience, but I quickly realize that to be able to write efficiently and effectively it involves a lot more thought and actual planning to make your story come to life. Probably one of the hardest parts was keeping my story organized while still showing the emotion and chaos and not dragging on a certain aspect or jumping from one part to another to much. How overcame this was actually rereading my work as if I didn’t know the story and it just helped me revise and reword certain things so that it made more sense. The peer review is also rarely helped as I gained a lot of feedback from some of my classmates.
The most rewarding part was watching my story, actually improve each time as I went back and edited it. Adding the small little descriptive language pieces and dialogue pieces which weren’t initially there in my initial draft actually makes it feel a whole lot more real, and actually put the reader in the story. My weakness, though was actually the time management and organization. I didn’t really put enough time beforehand to actually plan an organ what I’m going to do for each part of the story and spent equal amounts of time depending on what section it was. Like I mentioned, probably my biggest strength was making the reader feel as anxious and stressed as I was in those stressful travel moments.
The two SLO’s I engaged in were (1) Writing as a Process and then (2) Rhetorical Situation and Genre. (1) This SLO stood out the most, and it was probably because I learned from my weakness, which was the planning and time management. I did this by revising all of my work over and over again to make it stronger each time. (2) The second SLO which can be seen was when I thought about my audience I wanted to make sure that the story made sense 100% of the time and it actually fit into the purpose and the conflict I was facing. Another one to just add on was Reflection which was used in the last paragraph which relates not only what I learned from that experience, but it links it to how I can use it in all that other aspects of life.