The overwhelming feeling I had flipping to each picture in my birthday gift album was gratitude.  I realized how grateful I am for having something (figure skating) & somewhere (the rink) to turn to in my life. Skating has always been the consistent & most stable thing I could call my own.  This sport gave me community, life-long friendships, connections, new groups of friends, inner-strength, self-discipline, the ability to lead, independence, maturity & so many other qualities I don’t have space here to list.  The gratitude I feel for the person the ice helped shape is boundless.

I’ll be sharing three personal stories with you.  Each relate in some way to my figure skating journey & I hope you can relate to my stories.  You can read the second part below & the first part here.

Story Two

The hot summer sun beats down on my shoulders.  I pull my baseball cap down a little further, but it brings no relief.  I bend over, lean down far enough to touch the grass.  The soft, bright green bristles of the grass feel cool against my skin.  Even if it’s just the illusion of cool, any bit of relief is helpful.  My teammates to the left & right of me stand awkwardly in the sun too. One with a hand over their brow, baseball mitt barely hanging on the other hand.  My other teammate stretches with her arms up over her head, back creating a C-shape as she yawns. 

Boring… it’s our collective thought, I just know it.  Standing in the outfield while our pitcher works with our coach to practice her throwing skills.  We long for her to finally throw a pitch, our batter to swing & make contact, & secretly pray the ball reaches one of the girls on first, second, short stop, or third base before it can get to us.  I don’t want to see any action today, running, jumping, diving, dust flying around me, all those options sound worse than standing, no frying in the hot sun.  After what feels like an hour, our coach announces he’s switching up everyone’s place.  He shouts, “Ashleigh, short stop!”

“Crap,” I think to myself. Just when I thought this practice couldn’t get any worse.  I jog over to short stop, blow out a shallow sigh & plant my feet into the dry, dusty dirt.