(Emily Gray is from PEI, and will be competing in the inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, January 13-22, 2012. This story is reprinted from the CCA website).
Well, today I made the trek from one coast to the other.
Around 6 p.m. Pacific Time, Helen [coach Helen Radford] and I arrived in Vancouver, B.C. To say that British Columbia is beautiful is an understatement. When we were flying over the mountains, I was reading a book and I just happened to look out my window. We were flying over the Rockies! I know that they’re just mountains, it’s no big deal, but I’m pretty sure if you stacked up all the hills on P.E.I. they still wouldn’t make anything as big as a mountain. I went wild taking pictures with my new iPhone.
The team flies in tomorrow morning and I am very excited to see them again. It looks as if we have a lot to do in the next two days. Between training and games and talking to sports psychologists – and everything in between – we are going to have a jam-packed weekend. If the level of exhaustion that I am at right now with just a day of flight and jet lag is any indication of what I am going to be like on Sunday, then Sunday might be a long day!
In Vancouver, Emily hits the ice with her Team Canada teammates (Photo courtesy E. Gray)
Along with all the excitement of being in Vancouver, school has been going great! Today we got our grad proofs back (of course, I wasn’t at school to see mine) and everyone’s looks great. I have already written my first three tests and have two this upcoming week. I might just drown in homework one of these nights. Whoever said grade 11 was the hardest year obviously didn’t take two advanced placement courses. My mom always jokes, though, that she always knows where I am; either at the curling club throwing rocks, or the kitchen table doing homework!
I decided to run cross-country again this year as well. I was kind of hesitant to do it this year because of how busy I am, but I’ve decided to get as involved as I can for my last year at Westisle, so I might as well run. Our school had our Terry Fox run and I did the 4.5 km in just a little over 15 minutes, which was two minutes faster than my cross-country time last year, so I have high hopes for my zones and provincials.
This year, I’ve decided, along with my best friend, Meaghan Arsenault, to work on the yearbook committee. Since it is our last year to really make our mark, we thought what better way to do that than to design some of pages in the yearbook? It’s going to be really fun working with Meaghan on something that is so involved with our school.
And, of course, there are all those university applications on top of my already hectic life that I have to work at. I have decided to apply to University of Prince Edward Island, University of New Brunswick, St. Francis Xavier, and Memorial University for a Bachelor of Human Kinetics or Kinesiology. I am really excited about hearing back from all universities, even though it probably won’t be for a while, to see if I got into a Kinesiology program. It is a really competitive program, but when I told my guidance counsellor that’s what I had decided to do, he was very pleased with my decision. He told me that it was exactly me – sports and physics.
But, no matter how hectic my life is, I always find some way to get some down time in. Even if it’s just twenty minutes of yoga or meditation, or something as simple as lying in bed half an hour earlier. It’s the simple things like that that really make every busy moment worth it.