ZACK’S POV
The ground was filled with students, parents, faculties and heck a lot of fans of various athletes whom they had been seeing as their idol. Only after seeing this vibe, I was able to understand why GYT was such a celebration. Rather than going behind well-known athletes, these students supported each other to the utmost level. Now wonder why my dad had become a champion!!!!
It simply felt as if it was a celebration. GYT was indeed a celebration for the town. It decided the best of athletes who were badly wanting to get the best opportunity of their life. There were many boys and girls warming up in the arena for their respective events. Announcements were being made about the tournament and instructions were provided to the athletes regarding their events. Finally, the championship trophy. It was huge like it was bigger than what a normal person could weight. And what astonished the most was how the same replica of the trophy was there in my home. It was won by my dad and never had he told me how, when and where!!!!
My eyes teared up in proudness thinking how my dad would have felt when he had won it years ago. No wonder why GYT was hyped up so much by every athlete who dreamed of winning. However, in between all these, what fucked up my head was my fears and worries. It was something that kept my legs shivering from the messed-up thoughts of even praying to win it for my Zoe.
To divert my mind, I looked around the other trophies kept besides the championship one. And very badly, my negative thoughts flashed upon my head like shit once again. I was alone. It was for the first time in my life I was stepping on tracks without his buddies and dad. The tracks which lay majestically in front of me were the tracks that had the honor of having my dad’s footprints. To be honest, it was the worst test I was ever facing in my life. Yes, I was damn afraid of losing and so my heart was pounding faster than ever. I had never felt so weak in my whole experience of being an athlete.
Looking back at my life, I was a confident athlete who had this amazing courage and never care aboutwinning or losing. I was an athlete who stepped on tracks to satisfy my cravings for sports. It was my passion, my love. But today, I felt terrified at the very thought of losing. This moment wanted me immensely crave for dad’s presence to boost me up. Having no other way out of my shits, I sighed and was luckily met by Coach David.
“Shall we go for the registration?” he asked me in a pleasant tone and I nodded to him.
Amidst all my emotional and mental chaos, what I terribly failed to see was how my enemies were ready to drag me down to the ground for revenge. From the registration desk, Felix had come to know about my participation and he informed Noah about it. That was all it took to burn Noah’s ego and grilled up his frustrations. And to take it out, he used his safe card against me. Well, for me his safe card was a red card and I had no idea how I was going to save myself from it. As of Noah, he went to the registration desk and registered a complaint against me to the authorities!!!!
“This athlete was arrested for the charge of physical assault on me I am the victim. As an athlete, he is not mentally fit for participating and I won’t let this happen” he screamed his frustrations out at the authorities.
Obviously, this unexpected hurdle had made me highly worried about the consequences of this trouble that Noah had created intentionally. What proved his words was the clearly visible state of his bruised face. In no time, the authorities investigated about the case and they were about to disqualify me from the tournament. No one could ever imagine the state of devastation I was ready to sink in because of all these. However, like god’s man, Coach David interfered them from nowhere!!!!
“I am the surety of this athlete and I assure you of his fitness” Coach shielded me from disqualification.
From that moment, whatever happened in the registration desk wasn’t registered in my head. I was so messed up to understand all those that the only think that hit my head was the fact that he had asked them for some time to let him get the copy of the surety form he had signed in the station for my case. it did take some time to get the document but when he submitted it, the authorities held a small meeting and thankfully took the decision to let me participate. For real, this news did have a huge impact on the stress I was dealing with!!!!
“You are an athlete, Noah. Try to have some sportsman spirit and stop acting like kids. If you even consider yourself as athletes finish off your ego in the tracks” after the issue was solved, Coach went up to Noah and contemplated him.
Noah felt humiliated by David’s words and it was mainly because he had chosen me over him. For this humiliation, Noah swore to himself that he would not let me destroy his dreams and fame. Who would have taken the courtesy to tell him that I, myself, had no faith of any victory!!!
Coach David later dragged me from that mess to another corner just to let me have some breath. He knew I was not in my senses yet he had to make me act accordingly. I now had to choose my events. It was the next step and my hands trembled. Coash David’s support helped me a lot and even when I was blank, I was able to get back to my senses. With that, I chose long jump, 400m, 200m and 100m as my events. These events were my main events from my past experience as an athlete and without wasting any more time, I made my way to the green room to change. Bad luck followed me there too when, I was joined by Noah and his gang after what had happened in the registration desk.
“Why do losers come to fight even when they know they were going to lose miserably? Have you come to lose like never before and cry like mama’s boy”? They mocked me by imitating a crying baby.
It was Felix and Sam who did it so that they could discourage me from competing against Noah. But the fact that they didn’t know about me was that I had seen worse competitors other than Noah before and my father’s words were what provided him with strength to face them confidently.
My dad always used to tell me that overconfidence is what makes an athlete lose in the first place. The only aim an athlete should always be to satisfy the crave as this crave was what decided their result!!! Remembering these words gave a strange confidence to face the boys and my fate.
The first event of mine was the long jump. Anxiety and nervousness were at peak inside me and with wobbling spirit, I came to the event spot and started warming up. My breaths and heartbeat were racing in such a speed which made me feel like my heart wanted to run out of my body. Man, it was quite terrible condition of me, worse than all my imaginations about the kind of fear I thought I would get during the events!!!
Warming up was essential before any event as it made the body flexible and pumped up. I was pretty good at that. To be honest, it was one of my talents. With dad’s training, my routines were perfect in jumps. After warming up and making my body somewhat free, I sighed and calmly remembered point by point what all had to be done to jump the correct and longest distance during long jump.
Once my past experiences played through my mind, I looked up at the contestants who had gathered for the event around the pit. There were eight contestants. This number wasn’t a new one to me but what sacred me the most was how my legs shivered as my heart felt the absence of my motivator, my dad.
How could I get over the fact that I had never done it without dad??? How was I going to convince myself that even in his absence, his teachings and my experience was going to guide me to victory?? With blank head, I looked at the gallery and saw mom sitting there cheering for me. Well, that was a soothing sight because, it made me smile. It gave me such a smile that her last night’s words rang in my head and boosted my spirits!!!!
Then came the time of the events and me to get over all my mental shits. We contestants lined up and I had five rivals ahead of me which means I was the sixth in the line. To my bad luck, Noah was also in the event. It was pretty obvious to think that he was determined to not to let me win from whatever he had done till now with me.
Back to the event, one by one the contestants made their first jump. Each one made their jumps in a great way. They were indeed good competitors. After the 5 in front of me, came my turn to take my first jump. With all the negative thoughts muddled up in my head, with added anxiety of the way Noah gazed at me, my whole system was ready to fail. Yet, I took a deep breath and took my position. My confidence level kept on declining to a level which was next to negative. Still, I made my move, praying with all my soul to the god almighty and my dad.
With my heart pounding faster than ever and eyes shut in anxiety, I took my jump. I landed on the pit The referee raised the red flag that announced that he had fantastically made a foul. He lost his hope. But Zoe kept on going on in his head. He had to do it. He had to be himself. The next attempt started. Noah was in the first place after the first jump. He felt good seeing I lose. The rivals were doing better than before. This time he was adamant to make a successful jump for Zoe. When his turn came, I made a good jump but it wasn’t good enough to reach first place. But he was okay with it. He had finally started doing it in his dad’s absence. He wanted to do better again. In the next attempt I did it better than the previous one. But his attempt had not helped him win any position. He had lost the event. Noah was excited about I’s defeat. I had three more events left and if he could get gold, he could maintain his score to win the championship. This was a great plan but knew that it impossible for him to achieve it. He felt that it was over and in the green room sat on the bench with his head down. He hadn’t felt so vulnerable. What was he doing? What had happened to him? He knew that he changed a lot. Stella had met David in the arena and both of them were together when I was taking his jumps. David was really worried about I. He got up from the arena to meet I in the locker room but was stopped by Stella.
“David, you have already given him everything you could. Now let him handle himself. That’s what he needs the most now” mom stopped coach and told him.
“You’re right Stella. He can’t be helped until he helped himself” coach agreed to her words without any question!!!
Jist then, like a comet of fate passing through the worst of my time, someone entered the locker room. I heard them step in but my head was not letting me to focus of those footsteps!!!!
“If the coach Grover was here and saw what his son is doing then he could have smashed his face like hell” a recognizable voice made my heart skip a beat!!!
That was not it. In the next second, another voice too made my heart stop. This was the most unexpected I could get from these voices ever in my life!!!
“Not only that, if coach Grover was here, he would have literally killed his own son for being such a loser” this voice contemplated me.
In a matter of seconds, these voices made him revoked a life in me and had brought about great deal of confidence in me. I could literally feel it in my body, blood and veins. I felt strong and energized in a strange way, my legs had relaxed and out of the blue, my mind was filled with positivity and above all, happiness. It was them, my brother, Dash and Will. I had missed them so much in the arena and was slipped into utter disbelief when their words provoked me!!!
I had always wanted their presence in my life in the town but now, they had arrived in my life the very moment I craved for them the most. With that, I jumped up with excitement and turned towards them. They were standing behind me and when our moist eyes met, I felt a heavy burden taken from my head. I wanted to cry my heart out and so, we threw ourself on each other and hugged so tightly as if it had been ages that we met. In a way, it was true as it had been half a year, I had got this consoling compassion of my best buddies!!!!
“How?” I somehow muttered to them in a stammering tone.
“Mom had told us everything that happened with you last night. We couldn’t resist coming to you and we knew you wanted us so we came” Dash answered me with tears ready to roll down his eyes.
“How could we let you on tracks alone champion?” Will joked on me.
We tightened the hug until we felt like we had attracted the whole of each of our auras and vibe. We freed ourselves from the hug and Will made me sit down.
“Always just remember one thing. Missing your dad is okay but thinking that without him you are a failure in tracks is not okay” he told me in a confronting tone.
Somewhere, somehow, his words hit me right on spot. But still, it wasn’t enough to help me get over my trauma so easily. Even when months ago coach David had asked me to get back on tracks, I couldn’t even think about it. But now that it was happening, I was messed up in my own emotional shits that failure hovered over my fate!!!!
I sighed and covered my face feeling like an utter loser but my friends, they weren’t ready to let me lose so fast. They were all set to ignite the old Zack’s spirit in me and for that, Dash used his much powerful words to spark the fire.
“Dude. You are coach Grover’s son. You have him in yourself. You have his blood. You are him in so many ways and it's just a matter of time for you to discover it. And the best place for you to do that is in the GYT. So, go and show them who you really are” they told me in an enthusiastic tone.
And that was it. It was the spark which was much needed to lift my soul an man, I was so darn filled with vibes which was so hard to be defied my even myself!!!!!