1 . Thousands of runners gather for the annual Marathon. The largest holiday race in California_______ folks of all ages, sizes, shapes, and _______. The gun goes off and runners push for position. I just _______ at the new day and feel righteous for having gotten up and down to the event.

Before long, my _______ turns to depression as the seven-year-old passes me by. Elvis has already _______ the turn way before me and I fall behind a woman. The sense of _______ heats up and so does my _______. I forget that I already run many miles and have 4.2 miles left to _______. The runners around me set my pace.

Suddenly, as I make the turn, I am _______ by an overwhelming sight. A young man with one leg ________ in the sun is going at a lazy pace. The metal leg is ________ to his thigh. He is unaware of anyone who passes him. He is running his own ________ at his own pace.

I slow down and take his lesson. I finish despite the ________ in my knee. Far behind the 7-year-old. It doesn’t matter. It is my race, at my pace.

How many times do we let others ________ the pace, ________ our own goals, our abilities? How many times do we judge our success or our failure by what others have done?

2 . Billy Mills was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the Oglala Lakota people. His mother died when he was 9 years old. Hurting from the________, young Billy took up sports,________ an article that stated that Olympians are chosen by the gods.

So Billy started running. He ran his first race ________   jeans and basketball shoes. He finished dead last but fell in love with the sport. Then his father ________, and with a broken heart, he stopped running. Being orphaned at 12 and feeling ________, Billy didn’t run again ________   he reached high school.

He came out of high school with the fourth-fastest mile in the nation. He went on to the University of Kansas and ________ hard, hoping to make the Olympic team. He finished second in the trials and was on his way.

At the start of the 10, 000-meter race in that 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, Billy Mills, an orphaned boy from ________ Pine Ridge, South Dakota,________ up to run for his country, his parents, his people. As the race wore on,________   fell behind, lap (一圈) after lap, until four led the pack. With one lap to go, he was nudged out of his lane from behind, then bumped off his stride again. He was ________ at a distant fourth place.

In the last 100 meters, an unheard-of Billy Mills ________ into a dead sprint from lane four and strode his way into the ________ books with an Olympic record.

“It was ________ a belief,” Billy remembers. “Beliefs ________ us or destroy us, but we have that opportunity to create our own journey. ”

3 . The Differences Between the World Cup and the Olympic Soccer

You don’t have to be a soccer expert to know that the World Cup is the sport’s biggest international event. That’s right—it’s even bigger of a deal than participating in the Olympics. While most other sports see the Olympic games as the grandest stage, soccer holds its World Cup to a much higher _________. You may feel surprised but this is exactly the truth. In fact, the two events are set apart by a fair share of _________

The calendar year

Many of the sports that have their own Olympic events have _________that revolve around when the Games would be, so when it comes time to compete, the athletes are available. This isn’t the case for some of the bigger sports, _________, and soccer is one of them. When the World Cup qualifiers(预选赛) _________with the Olympics, even though there is a FIFA contingent(国际足联团队)that organizes soccer at the Summer Games, FIFA may not encourage its _________players to compete at the Olympics.

Countries participating

The World Cup hosted 32 national teams in Russia in the 2018 tournament.(This is also what allows the World Cup to host so many games over the span of a month. ) _________, the Olympics only hosts about half of that, with 16 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams participating in 2016Summer Games in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

_________requirement

You can’t put all the _________on FIFA for players not participating in the Olympics when the Games also put restrictions on who can play at the event. Each team participating in the Olympics can only have three players over 23 on their roster(参赛名单), which has led to the Games being mockingly referred to as a U-23 tournament. The World Cup, __________, doesn’t have such a limit.

Because of the age limit, many think the level of skill displayed at the Olympics isn’t a good __________of what the world’s best soccer players are capable of. Keep in mind that FIFA is part of the organizing committee for soccer at the Olympics. So it always has the final __________in whether the best players in the world can participate. As the New York Times summarized in 2008, FIFA’s message to the Olympics is clear: Soccer is one sport in which you will never be allowed to __________an event with the best in the world.

Fans

Part of the World Cup’s appeal is that it runs over the course of the __________, and viewers who don’t watch certain teams on a regular basis can become more familiar with the competition. The Summer Games __________the games—again, made up of fewer teams—onto a much shorter schedule with less time for fanfare.

4 . Do you know _______ to do sports? You may think it’s a funny question. Does everyone know how to play sports in right ways? I don’t think so. Here is some advice. For sports, morning is a _______ time than evening. Doing _______ before you work or study will make you excited all day. If you do lots of sports before you go to _______, you will find it’s _______ to fall asleep (入睡). And also, don’t do sports after dinner at once. It’s bad for your_______. Do a warm-up before doing sports and don’t _______ with hard sports. The good sports for the young and the old are _______. For example, running _______ isn’t good for old people. Try to choose right time to ____________ right sports. It will make you healthy.

5 . I have been in love with Yoga for many years. The practice of Yoga can lead to a ________ between mind and body. In the training, there is a ________ motion that has been one of my favorite poses. Each time I participate in this practice, I feel a deep sense of ________ with all those in the group.

Instead of standing alone, the class stands in a ________ close enough for us to hold hands. Each of us gives and ________ trust and support from one to another. As a unit we shift our ________ to one foot, resting the other foot against our ankle or our leg muscle. Slowly we ________ the hand position so that we are palm to palm. We ________ our arms and create a crown (王冠) of hands above our heads.

A slight ________ may start and soon we realize we have the ________ of each person in the circle, trusting them to protect us from ________. We feel a sense of security, closing our eyes knowing we are ________. In time we return to standing on two feet before shifting to ________ on the other foot.

As we finish, there is a moment of silence for us to ________ absorb the love and support we have received. Balance with support makes standing together ________ in community. So much better than standing alone.

6 . I started skiing when I was three years old. My mom worked as a ski instructor as she also loved the snow. While the other ______ in my group were whining(哭闹) and complaining, I was busy learning skiing. And at the age of four, I was ______ through the snow with my mom. I remember falling once and realizing that the ______ was taller than I was.

When I was seven, I decided I wanted to take my skiing to the next level and join a ______. There were two options: racing, a popular event for girls, and free skiing, an event mainly for ______. Siding the chairlift(登山吊椅) with my mother, I would see free skiers flying and spinning through the air. I ______ knew which team I wanted to join: free skiing.

As soon as I joined the team, I was placed in a low level. ______, I soon climbed the rankings until I came to the ______ group. At that point, I was the only girl on my team. Although being a girl in a male-dominated sport can be difficult, I’m actually thankful that I’ve had the ______ that I never had.

Life is not going to be a smooth road for all of us, and building ______ early on is important. My experiences have made me tougher and have ______ me to meet my setbacks with open arms. In fact, after this encounter, I’ve become a better skier. However, there is no way that I could have done it without my supportive ______ always behind me and my ______ coach always, always behind me as well.

I encourage you all to ______ your comfort zone to show the boys that girls are just as ______ as they are.

7 . I crossed my arms as I waited for my volleyball coach to finish talking to the officials. There was a(n) _________ with the score. But did it really matter？The Lions were ahead of us, 24-14，and the game would end at 25.

The Lions’ number 8 must have thought the _________ thing, as she covered her mouth and _________. At this, I waved to the five teammates on the floor. “Listen,” I said in a very _________ voice once we’d made a circle. “The Lions think this game is over. But we’ll make the Lions know getting that last point is never _________ work. From here on, nothing drops.”

We got ready immediately at the _________. As I returned to my _________, I checked the scoreboard, which now read 24-15.We couldn’t win this game, but we could _________ that number 8 from yawning again.

24-20, we were still _________. Kait served for the sixth time. The Lions hit and the ball __________ over our fingertips. At this moment Zoe dove and somehow managed to keep the ball off the floor. It’s my __________! I pushed the ball away with my closed fist. It floated up and was over the net to number 8.She hit the ball hard and it hit the floor on our side. Game over. The Lions __________ number 8, shouting with excitement.

I watched their __________ from the floor. Did I make the right call in the first place？I wondered. Should we have saved our __________ for the third and final game of the match?

But then Zoe __________ her hand to pull me to my feet. “Maybe this game is over, but the match isn’t. Nothing drops!”

8 . Columbia high school girls’ soccer team had lost every game in the season until a new ______stepped in two years ago.

Stuart Henley, a former soccer player and now a truck driver, ______the team and started training hard in February 2020. He ______the progress of the girls to team-building activities to help them bond on and off the field. He focused on the basics of football like passing, ______, and movement to try and bring the girls up to a good standard. His ______: coaches could give them guidelines, but girls ______what they felt they needed to work on.

Obviously, the girls were onto something big in the new season. They ______the skills they had learned and teamwork into their ______, which led them to an ______run of eight games, until they were sadly beaten 3-2 by Wyrley Pumas Team. Although this means they have been _____ the league title, the team have still exceeded (超出) expectation by earning the ______to the county’s top division.

“Whatever brings you down will ______make you stronger, especially for girls.” Captain Chelsea said, “Stuart has really ______our girls the philosophy of playing soccer. We’re going into next season full of confidence and ready to compete against tougher ______, but for now we’re still very much enjoying our ______.”

9 . Cody Wilkins sat on the bench, while his soccer teammates were scoring goals on the field. It had been a(n) ______ high school year for him. He was the only freshman on the team. He most never got to play, and he felt like a______.

“My confidence was shot. I thought maybe I wasn’t as good as my coaches thought I was during tryout. I thought maybe I should ______.” Cody says.

Cody suffered once he discovered he wasn’t a good soccer player. But he ______ to keep going. “The struggle I______made me want to work harder,” he says. “However talented you are, you can always ______ in sports.”

Then Cody took advantage of his ______ on the bench to watch his more skilled and experienced teammates play the game, and by the time he was a junior, he had improved so much that he was ______ captain of his team. He is now a senior and is being ______ to play soccer for several colleges.

If you base your ______just on whether you win or lose, you will never be happy. Winning is always ______ because there is always another ______ waiting for you.

No one is______. But you should learn about your strengths and weaknesses and know how to______ from failure. Once you accept that losing something isn’t the end of your world, you can get on with the business of living your life and learning from it. In the long run, this is _______.

10 . It’s 6:15 a.m. on a school day, and Jocelyn Murzycki has two kids and she needs to get out the door in an hour. As the sky begins to _________, Murzycki doesn’t manage a few more minutes of sleep. _________, she’s heading out in the freezing cold on her daily plog—a run to_________ litter.

First, the _________ are: a litter grabber and a reusable shopping bag, one side for landfill and the other for _________. Covering herself up, Murzycki jogs _________ down Main Street, stopping briefly to pick up a plastic cup. She usually needs to stop halfway through her 20-minute run to _________ her bag. Within a few hours the street will look littered again. But she isn’t_________—it just adds fuel to her plogging fire.

The word “plogging” comes from plogga, a _________ of two Swedish words that mean to pick up and to jog. The activity was ____________ by Erik Ahlstrom. When he moved to Stockholm, he felt ____________ at the amount of litter in the streets and began gathering friends to clean up the neighborhood while out for runs. Now Mr. Ahlstrom is traveling the world, publicizing the ____________ of plogging. In the U.S., social media and running groups are ____________ people to get out and plog: the “plogging” tag (标签) alone has more than 40,000 posts.

Murzycki has been doing this for a few years even before the trend hit the U.S. “It really is super ____________ if you go out every single day and just pick up litter,” she says. But she’s figured out how to make it fun by jogging with friends and adding the ____________ finding a tiny glass bottle adds one push-up (俯卧撑).