Niagara Falls

Usually my family does not travel often or far. However, the couple times we do travel a long distance away from home we go to Pennsylvania to see family. I have made this journey twice now once when I was seven and once last summer. Because we take my grandparents with us who cannot fly, we have to drive all the way to Pennsylvania. While it can get very tiring to be sitting in a car for such a long time, I get to see sights that I am not accustomed to seeing such as the mountainous state of West Virginia or Amish people. When we do finally arrive at New Castle, Pennsylvania, though I always have a great time meeting and remembering relatives and going to see sights around that area.
When I went to New Castle when I was seven, we decided to spend a day going to Niagara Falls in Canada, which was a day I will never forget. We had to drive through New York on the way to Niagara Falls, so young me was more anticipating the tall buildings of New York and I was not even that excited to see the Falls because I did not know what to expect.
When we got out of the car I was speechless and I was so excited that I could not even move. I had seen little waterfalls before, but nothing had even come close to comparing to the magnitude of this. After overcoming the shock I quickly made my way up to the top to where we were standing even with the top of the waterfall. I was so excited I did not know where to look. The infinite amount of water seemed to be moving at such great speeds that nothing could stop it until it suddenly just crashed all the way down to the bottom creating a big white mystery of foam at the bottom. I was left with so many questions by such a simple thing.
When I looked up, a thin wire caught my attention which I followed to see a net underneath it. I found out that this was for the heroic and incredibly brave people who thought they could tightrope over the Falls. Just the thought of it scared me. I also saw small wooden barrels, which I learned was some people’s method of riding down the waterfall. I was stunned that anyone would think of attempting to try that, and anyone who did must have been crushed by the powerful water at the bottom.
This one day to visit Niagara Falls, which I thought would boring, was one of the most exciting and memorable days of my life. It left me wondering at how such a phenomenon could occur in nature. The water seemed to flow over the top endlessly yet the bottom never filled with water. It was such a powerful, unstoppable, and august wonder, and I had seen it. That day certainly and thankfully did not turn out the way I expected, and because of that I was left with a memory I would never forget and wanted to experience again.

Learning from Experiences

Sometimes one cannot succeed until he/she learns what fails. Failing can teach a person what does not work for future situations. In the case of the Oak Hall varsity basketball team this year, we have been learning from our mistakes all year. We do not have a winning record but a lot of our losses can be contributed to the fact that we are not very experienced. However, as the season has been progressing we have been slowly improving as a team, which shows in how we fare against our opponents the second time we play them compared to the first.
A perfect example of this is St. Johns Country Day. The first time we played them was ugly; We lost the game by around thirty points. The second time we played though, we were ready for them. It was a big game with district’s playoff seeding on the line. We had learned what defense, a 2-3 zone, they switched to during the first game, which we could not score against. We also learned effective plays against a 2-3 zone in practice, so we could get open shots this time we faced them. The second game was at St. John’s school and the atmosphere was hostile. They had students in the bleachers who were jeering us as we went through our pre-game warmup comprised of various shooting drills. By the time the game started at 7:30, the stands were full of people wearing St. Johns shirts and sweatshirts.
We came out strong in the first quarter just like the first time, and once again we took an early lead. But just like last time, their team switched to a 2-3 zone and we were startled. St. Johns came back and took a big lead by halftime. We all knew we had to start playing better if we wanted to come back. So we came out in the second half fired up and ready to play, but St. Johns was not going to give up the lead easily so after a hard fought third quarter we were still down twelve points.

If there is one thing our team has been good at this year in our losses though it is not giving up. I started the fourth quarter and there was not a doubt in my mind that we were still in this game. We got the ball and we started to execute our new plays and they started working. We got a couple layups, three pointers, and some big stops on defense and then halfway through the fourth quarter we were only down five points. Our success on offense fueled the defense along with the support of the players on the bench. Everybody on our team was getting pumped up thinking this could be a great comeback for a win. Then with less than two minutes I got the ball at the top of the key and knocked down a three pointer making it a two point game. This got their fans into the game and the gym was alive again with their fans cheering them on and booing us. With less than a minute their player got fouled and had a chance to make a free throw. It was dead silent as he walked up to the line, but his shot hit the front of the rim for a miss so we had one final chance. We ran our play which had been working all game for us and one of our players sinks a three pointer to give us the lead with two seconds left. Our team went crazy for a minute but knew it was not over yet.

After a timeout their team throws the ball down the court to their big center who catches the ball and heaves up a shot, and it would just happen to be our luck that his shot hits the backboard and falls right through the net to give them the win. It was heartbreaking for us after such a good comeback and their whole team dove on the player who made the winning shot. The gym was deafening as their fans ran onto the court, and we hung our heads. In hindsight we played a great game and lost due to a last-second lucky shot. Once again we drastically improved in a rematch against a team because we learned from our mistakes and had a much improved performance the second time we played.

My Crash

The week before school starts again after summer is when most people want to have a couple more fun times to end a relaxing break from school. For eight-year-old me, this consisted of a day spent with my aunt at her house. The best part of going to her house was that her husband was manager at the local John Deere and so had brought a John Deere 4x2 gator home for me to ride around on that afternoon while they did yard work. I was allowed to ride circles around the house at a reasonable speed, so stubborn me would go slowly when I was driving in the front yard where I was visible and drive at the gator’s top speed as soon as I was in the back yard. There was a cluster of pine trees in the back yard which I had to avoid or else I would crash. This only created more excitement for me because the trees caused both a challenge and a danger.

At first I would slow down to make it through the trees, but as I continued around the house and my confidence grew I began to go faster and faster through the group of trees. At this point I was not slowing down at all until I had successfully made it through the pine trees and was once again in sight where I would repeatedly ignore my aunt’s warnings to be careful so I would not get hurt. This was going fine and I was having a blast until one time when I tried to mix up my route through the trees and I turned past one straight into another. There was a loud noise and next thing I knew I was laying on the ground. I yelled for my aunt who came to my rescue as I was laying on the ground. My one thought was that I had broken the gator which pained me so badly I started crying. I was reassured it could be fixed and the focus turned to my giant headache. When I hit the tree my chest and head jerked forward into the steering wheel leaving me with a large bump on both my forehead and chest. My aunt gave me a bag of ice and some advil for my headache. My parents were given a surprise when they came to pick me up and saw my head, but no one was angry as it was only an accident. And I was left with a story to tell on the first day back at school and new motivation to listen to when adults tell me to do something.