Wipe Out!

I’m tumbling through the water, I have lost all control, I’m wondering what I got myself into, and then I wave down a boat! Now pause just a moment, this was me just two weeks ago. My team and I were all excited to get to go to our teammate Natalie’s house on the lake to give skiing, wakeboarding, wake surfing, and tubing a shot. We slept over the night before with the plan of getting up bright and early to get out on the water. Well 7:30 rolled around and the guys were awake and ready, but the girls were nowhere to be seen. So, Natalie’s dad said, “Let’s go,” and we started off without them. Now let’s rewind the first scene to the beginning. As we motored away from the dock he asked us who would like to give it the first shot, so naturally I jumped up. I put on my life jacket and skis then jumped in the water. As I felt the boat pull my rope tight, I ever so gently began pulling myself up, then everything went wrong. I had no idea what I was doing and went head over heels face first into the water. With my teammates laughing at me, I decided to try again. However, this time I did even worse and ended up with water up my nose, both skis knocked off my feet, and I had to regain my bearings. So, a third time, then a fourth, and even a fifth, but they all ended up the same. I was so frustrated when Wyatt told me to watch him do it (He skied often.) Then what do you know, he got up first try. I then watched Cole and Grant both try, now neither got up for very long, but none the less, they got up. At this point I changed my goal from getting up on skis to simply getting up on something. Fast forward 10 minutes to when Mr. Taylor asked if we wanted to try wakeboarding. I once again jumped up. Well you guessed it, the first two times I ate it, but something changed the third try, I got up for about 10 seconds. Now I had hope, I felt confident that I could do this, and on try four it happened. I was gently pulled above water, rotated the board so my right foot was forward, and bent my knees a little bit and I was up for a fair amount of time. After this we ate breakfast then headed right back out. I watched my teammates conquer their challenges as we all eventually succeeded on one thing or another. Now these successes didn’t come without quite a few failures, but that is what made them so much sweeter. We all had fun, got our fair share of wipeout photos, and gained hundreds of stories through our weekend out, but the lesson we walked away with was also well worth it. We realized that some of us are going to be better at certain things than others, some may take longer to learn, and even if we fail time and time again we should always focus on the bigger goal. Failure should be used as a learning curve to get to success, and I am so glad that I got to fail next to my teammates and best friends, because we helped each other up until we could do it on our own. After that experience, I was more excited than ever to see what our year had in store, and how we will help each other accomplish that overarching goal. Signed, Owen Coon Your 2017-2018 Northern Region V.P.