Hold On

A couple of days ago I wrote about sports in my life. In that post I mentioned a very embarrassing in incident. In fact, it is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me.

My main event in track was pole vaulting. I started my Freshman year with my sister and some friends from the gymnastics team. We were a very close group who were extremely lucky to have the best coach in the state. My coach was so good that I was the only freshman girl to letter. Even though I was pretty good for a freshman at the time, I was still a little freshman who was in awe of the seniors, especially the senior boys.

I remember waiting for the bus to come to take us to our meet at Liberty high school. As we waited we had every type of weather possible. It was an normal overcast day in Washington and as normal it started to rain. After it rained for a while the temperature seemed to drop and the rain turned to snow! When the bus pulled up the snow stopped and the sun came out and made it a nice sunny day for a meet.

We arrived at the school and things went pretty normal. I don't remember how I did at the meet- probably mediocre. I do remember that the schools pole vaulting pit ( the big foam mat you land on) we very old and when you landed you would fall in-between. You would also get completely soaked every time you landed because of the rain and snow earlier that day.

After I finished competing I was walking back to the bleachers to find my bags and probably talk with my friends when the head coach waved me down. He asked me to get a relay baton ( the medal stick that the relay racers pass to the next person to run- for those who don't know). I wasn't a big deal to get it until he told me who to get it from. Tyler- the best looking senior boy. ( for the sake of my embarrassment we will only use his first name)

I looked around a little and found Tyler sitting at the top left corner of the bleacher. I jogged up feeling happy for a reason to talk to him. As I neared he I saw he was sitting with a few of his gorgeous friends. Trying to be confident I walked up to them and asked Tyler if he had the baton. I remember being intimidated but I didn't want to come off that way so I tried to address them like we were close friends. He told me he had it and pulled it from his bag handing it to me. Looking back on it he probably didn't even think twice of the exchange but I was pleased with myself. I turned around to bring the relay baton back to the coach when I slipped.

The medal bleachers had some water on them from the rain and snow. Had I just slipped a little and fell down it wouldn't have been that bad- but no. I slipped and fell down the ALL bleachers face first. All. The. Way. Down. Don't worry, I wasn't hurt and I even managed to not drop the baton. People were coming over to make sure I wasn't hurt, but I stood up quickly red in the face but fine. I started to laugh because I didn't know what else to do. The bleachers were full of teammates, coaches, patents, and those beautiful senior boys. I wanted to get away from there pronto. After waving some reassurance to some friends that I was fine, I went to take the last set of stairs until I would be on the track. From the field, to my horror I heard the head coach yell as loud as he could "Hold on this time!" I felt as though the whole stadium was looking at me. I grabed the hand rail and went down and handed the baton to the coach and run back to the pole vaulting area totally mortified.

I was lucky that my fellow pole vaulters didn't see it but everyone else did. For the next three year every time we had a track meet at Liberty high school one of my fellow classmates would relay this lovely story to the whole team on the bus. I wish I could say that was the only time I made a fool of myself in front of Tyler but it wasn't. The last time I ever saw him was years later at the airport. I don't know if he even knew who I was but I sure remember who he is.