{"id":1552,"date":"2012-08-04T16:41:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T20:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=1552"},"modified":"2012-08-04T16:41:02","modified_gmt":"2012-08-04T20:41:02","slug":"favorite-olympian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=1552","title":{"rendered":"My Favorite Olympian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not much of an athlete.<\/p>\n

I never was one.<\/p>\n

Other than a relatively brief period as a cheerleader, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only attempted one athletic pursuit, and that was soccer in eighth grade. I had no intention of trying out for my school team until I found myself in a new, very strange school where literally, anyone who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play sports (cheerleading was considered more of a laughable offense there) was ostracized. So in an attempt to secure a school experience that included actual dialogue, I tried out for soccer, secretly dreading every minute I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to play if I made the team.<\/p>\n

The coach, also my algebra teacher, came up to me at the end of tryouts and said something about how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d done such a great job that they really wanted me to be the manager (a euphemism for ball carrier) of the team. While I was clearly not athletic, I was clearly not stupid either, so I declined what really would have been a great opportunity if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d considered how many hilarious blog posts I would have been able to get out of the whole experience decades later. Too bad I was so short-sighted.<\/p>\n

I have not improved with age. Recently, my son and I had a race on the beach at night and he beat me fair and square, despite the fact that I gave it my all.<\/p>\n

He beat me twice.<\/p>\n

He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seven.<\/p>\n

My lack of ability in this area has done little to spark my interest in watching others play sports either.<\/p>\n

But I am patriotic. I am curious by nature. And most of all, I am fascinated by people who put everything on the line, for months or years or even a lifetime, all for a shot at achieving what is almost<\/em> impossible.<\/p>\n

So I love to watch the Olympians compete, to study their faces before, during and after the competitions, to watch their families\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 reactions to it all, to listen to their bios between competitions.<\/p>\n

I love counting medals, cheering for the underdogs, celebrating with the winners, and studying the performances in certain competitions to try to understand what merits good and not-so-good scores.<\/p>\n

I even find it fascinating that there are real human beings out there that are more than two feet taller than me.\u00c2\u00a0 How does one manage that exactly?<\/p>\n

So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had the Olympics turned on and running in the background of much of my life this week. But after all, it is a life that includes three small people and a man that couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t declare a ceasetalk<\/a> even during his wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s labor, much less the Olympics. Plus, my mind is swirling with new curriculum ideas, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m distracting my own little self much of the time.<\/p>\n

But I pick up pieces here and there.<\/p>\n

This morning, as I was walking through my house, I caught part of a story about Hannah Starling, the British female diver who finished in 13th<\/sup> place during the semi-finals, 1 measly place away from making it to the finals. The commentators were discussing her performance, and described how, after one of her dives, she stopped for a minute and looked around, wanting to savor the moment.<\/p>\n

She later explained, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I just wanted to take in the feeling of the whole crowd because I thought it might be my last dive at the Olympics.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wanted to remember the moment so I turned around and looked at it all. It was brilliant.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 17.<\/p>\n

I really like and am rooting for many of the Olympians. But Hannah Starling, a girl I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never heard of before this morning, is now my favorite one.<\/p>\n

If she has the wisdom and focus and mental fortitude, at age 17, during her first Olympics, amid all that screaming, pounding pressure, to stop, even for a second, just to enjoy the moment, then it is no hyperbole to say that she can do anything she wants.<\/p>\n

In the grand scheme of her life, missing the finals became, in that moment of pause, largely irrelevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not much of an athlete. I never was one. Other than a relatively brief period as a cheerleader, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only attempted one athletic pursuit, and that was soccer in eighth grade. I had no intention of trying out for my school team until I found myself in a new, very strange school where literally, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365],"tags":[1221,1222,1224,1226,1227,1225],"class_list":["post-1552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-off-island-stories","tag-2012-olympics","tag-hannah-starling","tag-hannah-starling-rocks","tag-olympic-diving","tag-olympic-womens-diving","tag-watching-the-olympics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}