Personal Narrative: A Career As An Athlete

In a rural town in southern Minnesota, I grew up with my mother and my little brother. There I fell in love with sports and physical activities, for it was all anyone could do at so young of an age, or in the town for that fact. My mother quickly realized my interest in these activities, likewise when it came to who I had available to communicate with, which was no one near my age. So, we moved to one of the larger towns near us, Owatonna, where I had been born. Moving there, I had been given greater opportunities, for instance in sports, education, clubs and extra-curricular activities. Growing up in Owatonna I played sports from a young age, those included softball and volleyball, but due to persisting injuries I decided, in my best interest, to stop my sophomore year of high school. After a few months of not being involved in a sport, I started to get bored and felt uninvolved, to me this became an uncomfortable feeling, so I asked my friend's father, who happened to be the B-squad or 10th grade volleyball coach, if the …show more content…
Although I was in speech and robotics, it just was not the same as being an athlete. I decided to go on and ask my teacher in options: a program which offers students real world mentorships, if there were any sports medicine or similar mentorships available for me. A few days later she had come up with an athletic training mentorship, luckily it happened to be with my high school’s athletic trainer, Terry “TC” Carlyle ATC, ATR. After the equivalent of one semester, Carlyle had asked for me to come back to be a student athletic trainer. I was so grateful that he did, training came naturally to me, and it helped me feel more involved not just with volleyball and softball but every sport. Throughout my senior year I worked with Carlyle year round to learn hands on what an athletic trainer does and how to communicate in a more professional