Final Draft

Noah Agwu

Maddie Kahl

ENC2135-142

25 March 2018

The Magic Concrete

In a small corner of Delaware there lies a small town called Wilmington. In this city there sits an institution by the name of Alexis I Dupont high school. On the campus lies a piece of concrete that has taught me everything about life and made me the man I am today. Others would just see it as a concrete slab with a metal ring drilled on top, but to me it was much more. Its beauty comprised of a landscape view of the school campus out the front side. On the back side of the circle there is a beat up rusty metal gate that towered over the concrete. Looking back out to the front there are yards and yards of uncut grass, dandelions, and open field. To the left lies a tree line that displays the beginning of a wooded area. This idiosyncratic corner of campus was my high school discus circle. Oddly enough I would walk past this spot every day on my way to school but never stopped to find out what it was for. Until the age of 14 when the track and field coach asked me to try throwing discus. Ever since then that circle has changed my life.

This piece of concrete made its first legitimate impact on my life at the age of 15. November 21st, 2013, I broke my leg in three separate places at my high school basketball game. Laying there on the court as my brother and coach rush over to me I heard nothing but my own thoughts. I was completely vulnerable and afraid of what the doctors would say. Later that day I would hear the news, “Noah you broke three bones and ruptured a tendon in your left knee, your season in over”. I was forced to take a leave of absence from school. From November to April I was out of commission. Doctors had regulated my every my every move. Upon my return, discus being a track and field event involving the power of one’s arms and core, throwing discus was the only thing the doctors would clear me to do. On April 8th, 2014 I had my first practice since my injury in November.

I was not the same athlete I was before my injury and this made me very angry with myself. I was trapped in a mental and physical battle with my personal standard for my athletic ability. The day became increasingly emotional. “Right foot down faster Noah!”, as I violently slapped my right thigh as if to wake it up from a deep sleep. “Come on Noah you’ve got to get this shit right! Get off your left leg faster Noah, damn it you’ve done this before!”, pure vexation of six months of physical impairment colliding with the individual desire for perfection. Things I believed to be simple drills were now tiresome tasks exposing a major weakness that mentally I was not able to accept. Frustration with myself replaced the enjoyment of the sport clouding my goals and making it difficult to believe in the results I was working so hard to obtain. Being humbled by my circumstances, I processed my weaknesses and set out to turn them into strengths.

As I got older the dream of a college education seemed to dwindle each year. My mother always said growing up, “son I don’t have the money to send you to school past high school so if you want to go to college you’ve gotta figure something out”, and that’s exactly what I was beginning to worry about. After my injury in early high school I began to scramble to find any way to get a college education as basketball was my only option at the time. I relied heavily on athletics because it seemed to be what I exceled in. After my medical clearance I successfully completed my track season and made it as far as my state competition, where I came in second to my brother. The next Monday, at the last practice of my junior year I stood in the circle faced with a dilemma. I knew if I wanted a college education I would have to put my all into whatever I committed too, whether that be basketball, track, or anything for that matter. I ended up making the best decision of my life choosing to invest all my time training to throw discus.

From then on for the next three years I trained alone and spent countless hours every day teaching myself the ins and outs of throwing discus. The toughest part was there was no coach at my high school, meaning there was no one to tell me, “place your foot there” or “right arm higher”. Every day it was just me and the circle and it stayed that way for years. Trial and error, success and failure were my coaches. The solitude and time spent away from other human interaction was my successor as well as my biggest enemy. Everything I was doing worked both in my favor and against me, eventually I began to take my personal life to the circle and use it to help me. A bad day at school, trouble at home, anything that seemed off about life, throwing seemed to bring everything back into perspective. When life seemed to be in shambles throwing discus allowed me to see how I could peace everything back together again. A lot of self-communication was often spoken. Me telling myself what I liked about what was going on both in that moment and in life in general. In coherence, lot of discus throws and drills where done, endless in fact. The whole time I heard the satisfying sound of nature. A lot of singing birds, the faint sound of running water from rivers nearby, the sound of animals brushing through the woods, my own yells of frustration were all things I would hear. Always a sense of home was felt there.

All the years of sacrifice and isolation were all for what would prove to be my proudest moment, one important competition, the state championship. Friday May 21st, 2016, I departed for the state competition only to be named victor in a few short hours. Later that day, as I returned to my high school as a state champion I walked down to the discus circle to say thank you, thank you for all the countless hours we spent together and to express my gratification. Growing up my five siblings and I did not have a stable childhood. My mother was unemployed, never had a job, and my father did not live within 13 hours of us. There was virtually no person in my life outside of my mother that was more consistent than the discus circle. As I stood there alone in my thoughts I sat down and spoke a few words of thanks.

“Thank you, thank you for the lessons you’ve taught me and the opportunities you’ve granted me. You instilled patience and understanding in me that I did not see important in my life before we met.” As I swept away the brush and leaves that lay on the concrete surface. “You taught me the true meaning of hard work, the true meaning of blood, sweat, and tears. You laughed with me and cried with me.” Putting the broom to the side I started to change into my throwing shoes. Emotion and appreciation continued to manifest in the words I spoke, “When times got bad at home id come to you, and you where always there for me. For years you’d listen when nobody would. For years you gave me answers to my deepest problems.” I continued what to me was like a prayer, as I took my discs out of my bag, “You taught me life lessons that I apply to life beyond athletics and above all you’ve provided me with a college scholarship and for all this I will be eternally grateful.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes and proceeded to have one last private practice as a high school athlete. As the day winded down I did not, screams of excitement and the satisfying sound of the discus hitting the field echoed across the school grounds as the sun set. “swoosh”, “clack”, one throw after the other, the next throw further than the last. “YES!” I screamed out having flashbacks of a younger me and everything he went through to get to this point. I threw until my fingers burned giving each throw everything I had. As I ended the day I felt at peace and happy with my life at the immediate moment. I proceeded to take my discus shoes off and lace them up at the top of the fence that towered over the back half of the circle as a token of the years we’ve spent together. Turning and walking towards a new life that only the circle and I would understand the tribulations it took to get there.