if you had told me that coming into Blue Valley High School was going to be like “High School Musical,” I would’ve believed you; but unfortunately, that’s not how my story was written.
Instead, freshman year, I focused on the small things — how to make friends, how to approach people while not feeling like a shy outcast, thinking if I could just figure out how to fit in with the rest of my class, blend in, it would get easier. Turns out you can’t blend in with the rest of your grade when you’re a “six-foot giant.”
Sophomore year, I learned what it felt like to walk in the hallways with total confidence and still be mocked, judged and bullied. That year, I experienced plenty of racist comments that made me feel like I did not belong and would never belong at Blue Valley.
My goal became getting to the end of the week: “just make it till Friday and everything will be OK.”
I carried the weight of not fitting in for a long time until I joined hurdles my sophomore year. This was the first place where I wasn’t an outcast, even though I was new.
During my junior and senior years, I continued and excelled in hurdles, ranking me ninth on the all-time list quickly. At meets and practices, I would clip the hurdles, fall on my face, and a lot of times, I was the slowest varsity hurdler there, but nobody laughed.
Every time I fell, my coach would just clap until I got back to the start again, which made me never want to stop.
I kept practicing, stayed back longer and soon joined KC Flyers, a competitive club track team, to get all my benefits.
For the first time in my life at Blue Valley, people were not making fun of me for features I was born with or looking at me walking into my study skills classroom to receive extra support.
Instead, they were looking at me because I showed up again. That’s when school stopped feeling like something I had to survive.
If there is one thing I have learned from RHOBV (Real Hurdlers of Blue Valley), it’s that you can get over anything without stopping your race and giving up.
Just make it till graduation, you’re almost there, is something I say now, but this time it feels different because it’s true. If you’re feeling like an outcast, like I was, keep showing up.
I’m glad it wasn’t a “High School Musical.” I wouldn’t have learned to get over actual hurdles — in track and everywhere in my life — if it had been easy.
