I played handball for six years before I quit the team because it was too hard to go to practice from ACI. I couldn’t do both things like I used to at my old school. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life to leave my team my coaches and everything that we did behind. It was kind of like starting a new life for myself. I have about 12 medals in my room five of them National Championship Medals. After all of those achievements our Coach decided that we should go to Europe and compete there. We were all very excited. We were going to play against kid that are three years older than us. I had faith in our team. We were pretty good.

Through the summer our Coach put practices every day of the week. We had three types of practices; Weight Practice, Stair Practice and finally Running Practice. The running practices were horrendous. We had to be at a soccer field not far from where I live at 7.30 AM sharp. We all hated to get up that early. Our Coach made us run at least almost 13 kilometers. My friend threw up at some point and then kept running. The stair practices were pretty tiring too. We had to run up and down the stairs at our school with different foot movements. We all liked the weight practices because it wasn’t as tiring as the other two and we had fun doing it.

After so much training we finally were ready to face our opponents in Vienna, Austria. We faced a totally alien environment. The handball fields were hard plastic and they were open air fields. There were practice facilities too. It was extraordinary. During our first match we didn’t know what we were going up against so we were dumbfounded at how they played. We lost that game and won the other one. The last game we had to win to move on to the Semi-Finals. We played quality handball and we won. We were all very happy so we went eating at a restaurant. We ate Schnitzels and it felt like heaven on earth.

It was time for the Semi-Finals and we were ready we had worthy opponents though. We had a really hard time and we lost the first one. Our Coach gave us a speech that got us going and we were determined to win. Unfortunately we lost again because they were too good. They played spectacular handball and gave us a hard time.

We had to win this last game to get in third place. So we all came together and we played like warriors. Our opponent played hard too. We went into the first overtime and then the second overtime. Everyone was exhausted. At last it all came down to the seven meter shootout. It’s like a penalty shootout in soccer. I picked our goal keeper that was in the game for a long period of time to go and they all agreed. I thought that he was in rhythm and focused. We won the  shootout 5-4. Our goalkeeper saved one of their shots. I felt really good because I picked him.

The ceremony was one of the greatest moments of my life. We were awarded the third place trophy and a fair play trophy. It was the proudest moment of my life. We had worked really hard and we deserved it. There is no better feeling than hard work paying off.  

After we talked about the story in class I understood much more about it. There is much more to the story and why it was written. I like how there are so many symbols in the story. I think the whole story is an indirect metaphor to war. It was written during war and in the Lottery people are going with this stupid tradition without saying anything. War is the same thing. Something people have done for years and years and no one has stopped it even when so many deaths are caused by it. The writer was really clever with her writing. Nearly everything she wrote was some kind of symbol or and indirect metaphor. I think when a story makes the reader think about the meaning of it, that is a good story. I think Shirley Jackson did a very good job with her story.

Fire and Ice Poem Response

You can find my fire and ice analysis here.