BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

Lacrosse and life goals

By John Parani, age 16 | December 1, 2016

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CONDITIONING John Parani, a sophomore at Lamar High School, found motivation from lacrosse to work hard in all facets of life.

Lacrosse has been a big part of my life since my freshman year in high school. Coming out of middle school, I was out of shape and didn’t have any plans to strive to be the person I am today. Within a year, I cultivated a passion for a sport and shaped up in strides.

Prior to joining and playing lacrosse, I didn’t participate in many activities. Lacrosse is not easy to pick up and requires a lot of attention and conditioning. One needs to be dedicated and put in effort to improve in lacrosse. At first I was indifferent and really only played on the team because it would look good on my resume, but as the year went on I started to see my physical and mental condition improve. I was motivated to bolster up and enhance myself by becoming infatuated with lacrosse.

I realized that I wanted to be the best I could possibly be and started going to the gym and practicing lacrosse on the wall. Every day I would bike 30 minutes to the YMCA downtown to work out on my cardio and physical condition. After that I started looking forward to lacrosse practice and would try to run extra hard. I learned to enjoy seeing improvement and got in better condition than I had ever been in. Later on in the summer I gave up drinking soda and kept to drinking only water. This had been a problem, because I used to have sugary drinks every single day, but I eventually got used to it.

When I looked in the mirror after one year of lacrosse, I realized that I owed a debt to it for turning me into someone that strives to be the best and works every day to be productive and care about my future. My lackluster life transformed into one that I can be proud of and it’s all thanks to lacrosse. I’m forever in debt to lacrosse, and I pay that back by staying dedicated and focused on advancing in the team and seeing genuine progress in the sport.

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