“More water,” I exclaimed as I was out of breath from practicing so intensely.  After eleven years of dance, I have never experienced this amount of change in such a small amount of time. This is the time that I learned that some things that we experience throughout our lives may seem negative at the time, but turn out to be positive in the end.  I had this experience not so long ago at an Irish Dancing competition in Edinburgh, Scotland.

     After years and years of drilling the same routine, my team was finally ready to compete at the World Championships.  We practiced hours upon hours, seven days a week.  Blood, sweat, and tears were shed at that studio to perfect our dance. My team and I traveled to Scotland days prior to our competition to prepare, relax and sightsee.  We traveled from Edinburgh to Glasgow.  We saw the beautiful vast land, the mountainous hills, and the lively villages.  Being in a foreign land to compete was exhilarating, motivating us to do our best.  

      The eve of our competition was the most stressful day that we have ever experienced as a team.  We spent the morning relaxing and grabbing lunch.  We received an urgent text from our coach to meet at the hotel immediately to practice and to bring lots of water with us.  This made us eager and nervous because we didn't know what was going on.  We met in the hotel lobby and I will always remember the look she had on her face as she walked up to us.  She looked fearful and nervous, yet she seemed prepared for what was to come.  She informed us that the rules had changed for our competition and that we would have to change our dance the day before we competed.  The clock was ticking.  The odds were against us.  I immediately felt a pit in my stomach and had the urge to cry.  After all this practice and hard work, how could this happen?  We began practicing right away.  Our parents frequently brought us water.  I just kept thinking, “I have to get this right, I can't let my team down.”  After 3 hours of practicing, we had finally felt confident in our new step. We ended the practice in an embrace and our teacher told us how ready we were.  I went to bed that night with butterflies in my stomach, nervous for what was going to happen the next day.

       The next morning, my dad and I got up and headed to the hotel lobby to meet my team to get ready.  Everyone seemed calm on the outside, but I knew without a doubt that we were all panicking on the inside.  Our teacher had shown up and told us that we could, in fact go back to our old dance.  Relief rushed over us all, but we felt upset that we had spent hours the day before learning a new dance.  We practiced our old way and felt confident in it.  We headed over to the auditorium and did our final preparations.  We got our dresses on, touched up our makeup, bobby pinned our wigs, fit in our final pep talk, and got on stage.  All I remember is walking on the stage, bowing, and walking off.  We got backstage and the eight of us embraced, knowing that we had tried our best. My teacher was in tears after our performance, we had done it almost perfectly.  This boosted our confidence and we were ready for awards later that night.  We spent the hours in between getting food and napping.  When it was time for awards, we were nervous because there were some other teams that had also done very well. The eight of us sat in front of our parents, clasping each others hands.  They started at twelfth place and we still weren't called by the time they got to the top three.  They called third place and second place and we still hadn't been called .  By that time, we knew we had won.  We jumped, screamed, cried, laughed, and hugged.  We walked on stage and accepted our award. The lights shining on us as we walked on stage and the crowd screaming and shouting for us was the best feeling in the world. Our teacher told us how proud she was and that she knew we could do it all along.  This goes down as one of the best days of my life.  It was the third time that I have won the World Championship, and it will always be one of my favorite memories with my best friends.  It started off as a stressful situation but soon turned into a memory that I will hold onto forever.