I have reached my senior year at Culver and I have one major goal, which seems to grow more difficult as the year unfolds. To provide some backround: last summer I worked at a polo farm, taking care of horses and working a barn so I could get some additional time to play polo. I wanted to improve my riding and mallet skills to assist CB (the best player on our team), as a wingman this season. I would also be able to step in for him if I were needed. To achieve this goal, it was up to me to build and enhance my riding skills if I aspired to become a great player at Culver. I realized this would not be easy, but I believed that working all summer would make the difference.
Unfortunately fate crossed my path with devastating news for my polo career and my hopes. Late in the summer I joined in on a fun polo game whose purpose was to exercise the horses, I was there in the blink of an eye because I seized every opportunity to play. Half way through this game I was pushed off my horse and had quite a brutal fall that would allow for no mercy on my body. Well it turns out that after finishing the summer at the farm, I would return to Cleveland with many back pains which I knew had come from my fall over the summer. Well I had come to find out, after what seemed like millions of x-rays, I had developed a stress fracture in my L4 vertebrate which was very unhealthy for someone of my age to have. So now that I have to wear a protective brace on my back for the next couple of months, I had lost hope for my polo career, but after talking to my friends who only gave encouragement and my coaches who knew what I was going through, I had begun to regain hope for my situation and knew that maybe eventually I could be back in the saddle, helping out CB on the field. I have gone to the gym and started doing physical therapy for my back and knew that if I work hard enough at it, I could maybe I could speed up the process of this whole back problem. Even though people have told me that it couldn’t’ happen, who are they to take away my hope, how can they put themselves in that position to judge my status and stamp a “done” on my fore head. I knew that as long as I could instill hope for myself, then there was nothing that I couldn’t do.

It is now December and the doctor said that if I continue to wear the brace and if I continue to work with the physical therapist then I could be healed by January 3rd, which by coincidence is my birthday, so I am hoping for this to be one of my best presents. I take a step outside the box and look in on my situation, and I know that my odds are not great for me to heal as fast as the doctor said, but I know that there is that chance, and with it I will do absolutely everything that I can. I have heard so many hope stories and I often think to myself “why couldn’t that happen to me?” and that is what is keeping my on track and focused on this process of redeveloping my back strength and becoming that polo player that I envisioned over the summer.