Important To Me

There are many things that are important to me.  Some things are more important then others, but there are many things that I would not be able to live without.  For example, the things that are most important to me are my friends and family.  My friends and family have gotten me through many tough situations and I do not know where i would be today without them.  Another thing that is important to me is playing sports and staying active and in shape.  I hope I never stop being active because I always eat a lot so I know if I stop being active I will definitely get fat.  Being physically fit and healthy is very important because I would like to live a long and healthy life without having to worry about serious diseases when I am in my forties.      These things have always been important to me.  I have always loved my friends and family because they have always been so good to me.  My parents have always been there to support me growing up and they have always been there for me whenever I needed them. There are many people out there who are not lucky enough to have parents like mine and I am very luck to have them.  Also my friends have always been there for me my whole life too.  Although I do not have many of the same friends from when I was younger to now I still cherish all the people who were or still are my friends.  They have all impacted me greatly and I am very thankful for them.      There are some things that are important in my life now that may not be important to me in the future.  For example, soccer is very important to me in my life right now, but it may not be as important to me in the future.  I think it will always have meaning in my life, but right now it seems like my whole life.  I know that when I am married with kids that soccer I'll seem vey insignificant.  I will always have the memories of playing, but it may not always be my entire life.       Another example of things that may not be important in the future is my grades.  I know it is important to be educated, but in twenty years I am not going to really care what my calculus grade is.  My grades are very important to me right now because it determines many things like how much scholarship money I will get for college and if I can continue to play softball or not, but I know in twenty years it is not even going to matter.      There are many things that are important to me and I know it will change in the future.  When I grow up, get married, and have kids I know they will be the most important thing in the world to me, but for right now I am concerned about my grades and sports.  On the other hand I know there are certain things like my friends and family that will always be important to me throughout my entire life. 

Courage

Courage is doing something that forces you to face your fears.  Courage is different for everyone because everyone has different fears.  Of course the people that chase down bank robbers and shoot down airplanes are courageous because that is definitely something that requires courage, but there are smaller things that require courage also.  For example, some people are extremely afraid of speaking in public, so it requires a lot of courage for that person to get up and speak in front of a room full of people.          Courage is an emotion that not everyone has.  Some people have a lot of courage and are able to do brave things, while others are not courageous and they never face their fears.  Courage is standing up to your fears and facing them head on.  No matter how big or small a fear is it takes courage for a person to get over that fear.  Everyone is different and everyone has different opinions so there could be something that took a lot of courage fold a certain person to do, but in your mind it was a very simple task.  For example, getting on an airplane.   For some people it is a piece of cake, they just get in their and read until they reach their destination, but for others it is a huge fear and they need to have a lot of courage to be able to sit on that plane as it flies through the air.         A person does not have to be an adult to have courage.  Everyone has fears even from the youngest toddler.  Although very small babies probably do not understand fears, but once a child becomes a year or two old they start to recognize fears in the world.  Once a person has fears they need to have courage in order to face their fears.  Even the smallest fear takes a certain amount of courage.  Of course small fears do not take as much courage as shooting down an airplane, but there is still some courage required for the smallest fears.      In my opinion the people that have the most courage are the people that serve for our country in the military.  Whether it is the army, navy, marine corps, or air force they are all extremely brave and courageous.  I know I would never be able to survive going to Afghanistan and living there for a significant amount of time.  It takes a lot of courage to know that there are people that want to kill you and shoot at you, but you have to be brave and courageous enough to stand up and fight.      Courage is a strong emotion and everyone possesses it somewhere deep in their bodies.  Sometimes it is more difficult for some than others, but if people are willing to stand up and fight their fears it takes courage.  Everyone's view on courage is different, but in my opinion if you are able to face your fears, no matter how small, then you have courage.  

Wildcard: Central Softball

Softball season has always been my most enjoyable sports season.  I think it is because the weather is getting nice and the end of the school year is coming near, or it may be that we know how to have fun as a team.  I love soccer season, but I take it so seriously that sometimes it is not fun.  I always have fun playing softball because win or lose I am just there to have fun.  Of course I want to win, but honestly I am not going to be devastated if we do not.   Our softball coaches always let us have fun and goof off at practice which makes it even that much more enjoyable.  Most of the time Coach Stout and Coach Ardise are the ones that start the jokes and make us all laugh.  I love how we can laugh and joke around, but still have intense practices, be a good team, and win games.  We have always been pretty good in the past, but this year we have been off to an exceptional start.  We are 5-0 right now and we are ranked ninth in the shore.  It is pretty crazy that we are doing so good because this year we have been having the more fun than ever.  We play games at practices and we always get very competitive.  My team is the underdogs so we always have to create little tricks in order to win.  We normally don't win, but we always have fun.  There is also a team joke about My Little Pony's.  We have a small pink pony named Jen and every practice I put her in a small hole in my glove.  At first our coaches thought I was nuts, but they soon got used to it and now we constantly joke about the pony. There are many things that make our team crazy, but I think the icing on the cake this season is our prank war.  After Courtney and I tricked the whole team last year with our prank about the homeless man in the shed, the rest of our team decided to start a prank war.  Now most coaches would not approve of this prank war and I did not think they were going to, but they did not seem bothered by it so it kept going for a while.  The other day at practice we were just getting our equipment out of the shed when all of a sudden our three coaches start running after us with water balloons and silly string.  I do not know of many coaches who do that, but that is why I love playing softball.  It is always fun and exciting and you never know what is going to happen next.  I'm sure this prank war will continue throughout the season and i just hope that we can continue to win.  We have been doing extremely well so far beating good teams like Toms River South, Pinelands, and Jackson Liberty.  Hopefully we can continue to win and continue to have fun while we do it.  I really think that we have been so successful because we are having fun and enjoying ourselves playing softball.   

Advice

If I could give myself advice knowing the things that I know now I would tell myself to just have fun and be yourself. When I first came to Central I was extremely shy and nervous about making friends.  I never really said much throughout my middle school years and once I got into high school it got better.  It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I felt totally comfortable being the way I was and I felt comfortable talking to people.  When I was young I was always afraid of saying something dumb to someone and people would think I was weird, but it turns out saying nothing was even worse because many of my friends now say that they thought I hated them in middle school because I never talked to them.      My junior and senior years of high school have been awesome because I am able to be myself and I do not feel afraid to say whatever is on my mind.  I have learned that people will except you for who you are no matter how weird you are.  If I would have known that when I was in middle school or even my freshman year of high school I would have been a lot better off.  Luckily I figured it out towards the end of my sophomore year and I was able to be myself for two years of high school and hopefully the rest of my life. Also, I would give myself the advice to work a little harder in school.  I always was in honors classes and I have always worked hard, but I have also slacked off significantly too.  I think I could have worked harder than I did and now looking back I wish I would have studied harder and worked harder to improve my grades while I was a freshman and a sophomore.  I always had good grades in elementary school and middle school, but once I got into high school and my friends and sports became more important than schoolwork.  Although sports are important I wish I would have focused a little more on all of my schoolwork.  Other than those things I do not think I would have changed anything else throughout my four years of high school.  I have definitely had a successful high school career and I wouldn't want to change much of it.  I enjoyed high school so much and I am very sad that it is almost over.  If is so hard to imagine myself going to school somewhere else in September and not coming back to Central Regional.  I would want to do everything the same way as I did because I enjoyed it so much I would not want to change anything.  I know that I will always remember my high school friends and teachers and my whole high school experience.  I know I will always come back and visit because I am going to miss it so much. 

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something that should be used sparingly in my opinion.  If forgiveness was just given away easily it would cause many people to do wrong things because they know they will be forgiven.  Of course people make mistakes, but if someone knew they would be forgiven they may make more mistakes.  Forgiveness should be a rare thing and saved for people that absolutely deserve it.  For example, someone who deliberately lies about something and they know they are doing something wrong and that it is going to hurt someone they should not be forgiven. They were fully aware of the consequences of their actions and they still did it anyway therefore they do not deserve to be forgiven. 
There are many times that I have practiced forgiveness because I understand that people make mistakes.  No one is perfect because humans are going to make mistakes, there are car accidents all of the time and car accidents that are unintentional deserve to be forgiven.  It depends on the person, but for some people forgiveness is something that they do not give away often.  For example, one time at softball practice one of my teammates was hitting the ball off of the machine and when she hit the ball it hit me right in the back.  Of course I forgave this girl for hitting me because she did not mean to do it.  It was an accident and accidents deserve forgiveness.  On the other hand, people have lied about me and they knew exactly what they were doing.  I did not forgive this person for doing that because he knew that what he was doing would hurt me, but he continued to do it anyway.  I think that lying is completely unforgivable because there is really no reason to lie.  A person is aware when they are lying and in most cases a lie is going to eventually hurt someones feelings down the road.
There are many people in this world that will forgive people for anything and everything because they want to avoid confrontation.  I used to be one of those people until I learned that if you forgive anyone for anything people tend to walk all over you.  In my opinion, forgiveness should be earned because it shows people that they should respect you if they do not want you to be mad at them.  Depending on the person it could be wise to forgive everyone for everything.  It is a wise decision because it does not cause any problems.  Although it does not cause any problems or confrontations there is also a chance that you could get hurt many times.  If people know that you will forgive them to avoid a problem they will be more likely to take advantage of you and your feelings. 
Forgiveness is for people who are unlucky enough to have accidents happen.  Sometimes accidents cannot be avoided and unfortunately all of us have been stuck in an accident and we want to receive forgiveness because we did not intentionally mean to hurt someone.  
 

Wildcard: Bowling

I have always been interested in sports throughout my entire life.  I have played soccer since I was five and I played just about every sport known to man.  From baseball, tennis, roller hockey, and basketball I did them all.  When I was little my mom would drive me from one practice to the next and I loved every second of it.  Unfortunately, as I grew up and the sports became more serious I had to choose one that I wanted to stick with.  I chose soccer to become my main sport and I slowly dropped the other ones.  
I still played softball and basketball once I got to middle school because I enjoyed the sports, but soccer always came first.  I was always on the top travel teams and we would travel for tournaments and games all over New Jersey and the East Coast.  I loved the competitiveness that sports gave me and I loved the feeling of winning.  I always loved gym and took every game I ever played seriously.  
As I got into high school and soccer got even more serious I struggled through the winter of my freshman year playing basketball.  I was not as good as I had been at basketball and it was too much of a commitment with soccer.  My sophomore year I knew I was not going to play basketball, and Mr. Ardise convinced me to join the bowling team.  Bowling was only three times a week and it was extremely laid back.  I remember the first day of tryouts and there were forty girls trying out for a ten person team.  I was nervous that I was going to get cut, but somehow I made it and it was the start to my bowling career.  
I swore that I would do bowling just for fun, especially since I had never bowled before, but the competitiveness came out in me and I became really serious with it.  I ended up getting my own bowling ball and Coach Ardise taught me how to hook the ball perfectly so all the pins would fall down.  It turns out I made varsity my sophomore year and had a very successful season.  
In the past three years I have really enjoyed bowling and it has really given me a different perspective on sports.  In all the sports I was exposed to the other team was the enemy and I wanted to tear them apart, but in bowling everyone is friends.  We would laugh and joke with the opposing teams and I even made a lot of new friends through bowling.  Bowling was so laid back that you could go and get a sandwich in the middle of a match.  It was completely different than any other sporting event I had ever been too, but it was relaxed and exactly what I needed.  Although it was laid back my team and I still took it seriously.  We won B-South for the past six years and this year I even finished in the top 5 bowlers in B-South.  I never in a million years thought I would join the bowling team, but it turned out to be one of my most memorable experiences throughout high school and it made me realize that not all sporting events are as cut throat and aggressive as soccer. 

Unfinished Business

With only two months left of my high school career I have been thinking about my past four years at Central Regional a lot lately.  It seems like just yesterday that I was walking into the school as a freshman scared to death of the seniors, and now I am graduating.  I had very high expectations for myself as a freshman and I think I succeeded in most of them.  
I remember going to summer soccer practices as a freshman and seeing all of the older kids and how different they seemed.  I was terrified of all of the seniors and barely said anything the whole season.  I remember thinking that once I was a senior I wanted to be nice to the freshman and make them feel more comfortable then I felt as a freshman.  This year I was always nice to the freshman and underclassmen and treated them as equals.  All of the seniors this year were a lot nicer than when I was a freshman and I know that the freshman this year had a better experience because of that. 
Playing soccer my whole life I knew that I wanted to have a successful career in high school and hopefully beyond that.  I played varsity soccer for four years and being captain for two I would definitely say that I had a successful four years.  This year we won the first ever B-South Conference Championship for Central Girls Soccer and that was a huge accomplishment for me.  When I was younger I always pictured myself playing soccer in college and I am lucky enough to achieve that dream as well.  I will be playing soccer in college next year and I hope that I can have another successful four years. 
As for leaving high school I do not feel that I am totally ready.  Being in high school has been the best four years of my life and I do not want to leave.  When I first came to Central from Island Heights I didn't have any friends so my middle school years were not very enjoyable.  After going through two years with not many friends I do not want to start that over again in college.  Hopefully playing soccer and being a part of a team in college will help me make friends and I hope that I can enjoy college as much as I enjoyed high school. 
The only thing that I would say I did not accomplish that my parents would have wanted to me to was to graduate in the top 10 of my class.  Honestly this was more of a goal for my parents then for me, but I did see myself there when I was in elementary school.  Although I am not in the top 10 kids in my class I still got very good grades throughout high school and I am proud of the hard work that I put into these past four years.  
As for the end of my senior year I have one more goal that I would like to accomplish.  I want to win B-South with the softball team so that I could have three B-South Championships in one year with soccer, bowling, and softball.  We are off to a good start this season and I hope that we can continue to play well and hopefully win B-South.  Also, I hope that we can advance far into the Shore Conference Tournament and State Tournament.  We have a good team and I think that if we work together we can end the year, and for many of us our high school career, on a good note.