Lailah White
ENG 1121
Revised Discourse Communities
Professor Penner
Word Count: 1029
20 February 2020
        When you hear about track and field, you most likely think about the world famous sprinter
Usain Bolt or the Olympics with the bright lights and shining gold medals, but I’m here to tell
you from first hand experience that it is way less glamorous than that. Before I joined track I
used to think the same thing and is one of the biggest reasons why joined the team in the first
place. Everyone you meet usually has already been running since the age of six so when I joined
freshman year of high school I felt very much intimidated by all the fast people. also people your
age have built a name for themselves in this community. Overtime, you begin to develop and
become faster through practice, while making a couple of good friends and memories along the
way.
     My first interaction with track begin in the physical education class, I knew I wanted to either
join basketball or track because I was planning ahead for my future to get a scholarship and go to
college for free. I chose track first because everyone my whole life told me that I was tall and
fast, but that is beside the point. There was a three day tryout for track and I decided to go after
school. I could tell that from the coach the team’s goal was to win a championship for the school
and one day be the best girl’s track team in the nation. The girls on the team were like a pack that
you had to break into, they had their own group chats, they would hold meetings every Friday
before competition, and always sit together during lunch. One thing that never changed with the
team was the conversations in the locker room before practice. This is where they would discuss
their classes, their daily drama in school, and how hard practice was about to be. The girls would
always joke about how they all were going to quit track but they never did. In school you could
always count on hearing about the track team on the loudspeaker in the mornings. This is where
the principal would list out all the accomplishments of the past weekend’s competition. When I
was on the team hearing my name on the loudspeaker gave me pride and joy because my
classmates and my friends in the hallways would tell me “good job”.
    Something else that I enjoyed about the track team was the new language I learned along the
way. A few words and phrases I learned was “taking out” and “PR”, which means to run out
before you get the baton in a relay and to run a personal record in an event. These things helped
me better fit in with the track community because I was able to communicate in their language. It
is important to know the language of track but before you can be fully accepted into the track
community you would have to know at least how to run correctly and have the right gear to run.
this would include spikes, trainers, and a bag with a change of clothes for practice. It is also very
important to have a good coach because without a good coach you are not going to be able to run
fast times, and when you run fast times you are more likely to get more friends because people
like to think they are friends with the next Olympian. The faster you are the more known you
become round the track community.
    I decided to ask one of my teammates about their experience with track to get a different
perspective. My teammate Quinzell is a sprinter and I am a middle distance runner, you may be
asking yourself what is the difference. The two sections involve obviously running but for
middle distance you are typically running 400 meter and up, with a sprinter it is the 400 and
down. Quinzell’s track career started when she was 6 to 7 years old, most people in the sport
usually start around this time, it is very rare that you find people just starting track in high school
like myself. She says that she got into track through family and her culture, Guyanese, in the
Caribbean it is very normal for a child to do track because the people on the island are very
active in walking everywhere they go. For others that are not Caribbean they hear about track
through the potential scholarships that they could get, making college expenses less of a burden.
Quinzell practices everyday of the week except weekends, which are taken up with running
meets. Her favorite part about track is the away meets because she gets to travel with her team
out of the state to compete. Her least favorite part would be practice, there are two types of
practices that she goes to, weight room and running. Weight room is used to get the sprinters’
bodies strong and explosive. The running practices are used to get the runner faster and also
explosive. The runners in the community always have a debate on who has the harder practice, it
is still in debate today.
     In conclusion, track and field took me off guard because I never expected a sport to challenge
me mentally, physically, and spiritually all in one. The sport is way more than running because it
pushes you to work harder, even when you feel you’re at your worst. This was a confusing
concept to get my head around because I was used to always getting the results for my hard work
right away, but with track some days are good and some days are bad so you continue to work
until it pays off. So if I had the chance to talk to my younger self, Â I would tell myself how hard
the challenges of track would be because initially, I thought track was just running and you get a
scholarship right away, but it takes so much more like dedication and a lot consistent hard work.
Works cited
Brazilio, Quinzell. (Friend) Personal interview (In person) . 20 February 2020
