Jumping Over Boundaries

When I was in elementary school, we had an annual sports day. Girls could do many things like hopscotch, jump rope, tetherball, and dodgeball, except high jumping. Only boys could do high jumping.

That’s what I wanted to do — high jumping. So I went to the coach.

“Girls don’t do high jumping,” the coach said. “Girls have all these other things they can do.” He excitedly described how much fun it would be.

I’d been high jumping in the backyard with my five brothers for years. Although I am a girl, I did high jumping pretty well. My brothers could rarely beat me. Whenever my back crossed the bar, that feeling is extremely wonderful. I went home and told my mother what the coach had said. My mother, a small, thin woman only four feet eleven inches tall, said, “I think we should go visit him.”

“Visit who?” I asked confusedly.

“The headmaster.”

“Visit the headmaster?” I was terrified. Would I get in trouble? Would my mother and I be crossing boundaries we shouldn’t cross?

My mom and I went to Mr. White’s office. “Linda wants to do the high jump,” my mother said.

“Mrs. Martinez, you don’t understand. This is the tradition of our Annual Sports Day,” he said.

“But Mr. White, I don’t know where it says that girls cannot do this.”

The headmaster couldn’t find any rules that said girls couldn’t do the high jump. “I have to think about this,” he said at last.

When we got home, my mom told me something I would always remember: this wasn’t just about me. “Maybe other girls want to do this, too,” she said.

My mother waited a week, but still didn’t get the headmaster’s reply. So she walked over to the school again. “Mr. White, please. I ask you this not for me and not for Linda, but let’s just see how it works.” In the end, Mr. White agreed.

I stood on the field of the high jumping competition.

To my surprise, some of the cheers I got were from boys!

2 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

I grew up in southeastern Michigan. I was a fan of Detroit Tigers, a famous baseball team, as a young boy.

My childhood dream was to be like my hero, Al Kaline, and someday play for the Tigers. My Dad would take me to Tiger Stadium several times a year and my hero Al Kaline would never let me down. We never attended a game that he didn’t get at least one hit.

I was crazy about baseball. If there was a game in my high school, I was never absent. I kept practising so that I could achieve my dream of playing for the Tigers, and I was doing well at each level of play. Later, I got a chance to sign up for a strong American Legion baseball program. There I met our coach, Bob Ohm, who knew a lot of baseball and taught each of us the basics as well as more advanced baseball skills. With Bob Ohm’s help and my hard work, I had set new records in many baseball championships.

My dream to be like my hero seemed to draw near. One summer, I went up to play the final season in Marinette. There were scouts who came to find the best players. This was it! My big chance!

Well, as the game progressed I hit the ball very well getting five hits in the game. Unfortunately, I also made four mistakes. The final mistake actually drew laughter from the crowd.

注意：

1. 续写词数应为150个左右；

2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

After the game, I knew my dream of playing professional baseball was lost.

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Today, I teach baseball in a high school.

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I was never a fast runner and thus I always didn’t like running. Throughout my childhood, whenever we competed in the 50-meter run, the 400-meter, or any other type of race, I would finish in the bottom half. In my late teens, as a member of a baseball team, I was the slowest runner on the team. In the preseason training, I was always the one running by myself at the end.

Therefore, twenty years later, when I entered my first official running race — a 3,000-meter challenge in my city — at age 38, I certainly didn’t expect to win or come close to winning.

I was there because my college friend Jim Hosek was the director of the race, and he asked me to run. The race was aimed at raising money for the unfortunate patients in a hospital and encouraging the patients and their fanilies to be brave, determined, and confident with sportsmanship.

It was a heartwarming program.I wanted to support it, so I showed up, paid the entrance fee, had a number pinned (把……别住) on my back, and moved over to the starting line. There, I waited with about 300 other runners for the race to begin. I was nervous. Would I be the last one to finish a race again? Could I even finish the race? I wondered.

Before long, someone spoke into a microphole, “Anyone weighing over 200 pounds comes down to the scale (秤), please.” Knowing I was over 200 pounds, I walked down to the scale. A man told me to stand on it. “Two hundred and three pounds,” he said. Then he wrote down the race number that was on my back. Out of curiosity, I asked him why he did so,and then I was told there would be an award ceremony (仪式) after the race. One award was for the first finisher in the over 200-pound group, and this special award would be announced at the end of the ceremony.

Not expecting the award, I ran towards the starting line, never realizing there were only two runners weighing over 200 pounds.

One day, Alex, a 12-year-old school boy in a small town, got the news that the World Chess Championship was taking place in the neighboring city of Grandington. Fueled by his deep passion for chess, Alex decided to enter the competition, even though he was not officially invited. He had a feeling that he could stand a chance against some of the world’s most skilled chess players.

The following morning, Alex packed his chessboard and chess pieces. With a mix of nervousness and determination, he boarded the train to Grandington. Once he arrived, the big city overwhelmed him with its tall buildings, bright lights, and the energy of chess enthusiasts from around the world.

With the help of a friendly stranger, Alex managed to find the tournament venue (比赛场地). The hall was enormous, filled with rows of chess tables and players engaged in intense matches.

As Alex glanced around, he noticed how small he felt compared to the chess celebrities surrounding him. Taking a deep breath, Alex approached the registration desk. The tournament organizers were surprised to see such a young boy standing before them, but they couldn’t turn him away. Sensing his determination, they allowed him to participate, considering it a good opportunity for the other players to show their skills against a young talent.

As the championship progressed, Alex’s opponents thought nothing of him due to his age. They saw him as an easy win, but little did they know that Alex possessed a strategic mind and a skill of unconventional moves. With each round, Alex astonished the players with his brilliant plays. Word quickly spread about the young talent who had accidentally entered the championship. The media became excited by Alex’s story, and soon cameras and reporters flocked to capture his journey. Despite facing experienced opponents, Alex’s passion for the game and his unwavering focus helped him advance through the ranks. His victories grew more remarkable with each passing day. People from all corners of the world began cheering for him, sending messages of support and admiration.

In the final round, Alex found himself facing the world chess champion.

Alex’s unexpected victory made him a household name.

From an early age, Patti Wilson was told that she was an epileptic (癫痫患者). However, she was a lively and enthusiastic girl, looking at her illness as simply “an inconvenience”. She never focused on what she had lost, but on what she had left. One day, Patti said to her father, who was a morning jogger, “Daddy, I’d really love to run with you every day, but I’m afraid I’ll have an epileptic fit.”

Her father told her, “Don’t worry, my girl. I know how to handle it! Let’s start running then!”

It was a wonderful experience for the father and daughter to run together every day. After a few weeks, the ambitious girl told her father, “Daddy, What I’d really love to do is to break the world’s long-distance running record for women.” The father checked the Guinness Book of World Records and found that the farthest any woman had run was 80miles.

That year, she completed her run to San Francisco, which is a distance of 400 miles. She was wearing a T-shirt, reading, “I Love Epileptics”. Her father ran every mile at her side, and her mom, a nurse, followed in a motor home behind them in case anything went wrong. But nothing happened at all while she was running.

As a senior high school student, Patti announced that she was determined to run from her hometown up to the White House, which is a distance of more than 3000 miles away. Her classmates got behind her. They built a giant poster that read, “Run, Patti, Run!” This has since become her motto and the title of a book she later has written.

On her second marathon in Portland, she had her foot injured.

Half a year later, Patti ran in Washington and finally shook the hand of the President.

7 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

My son Joey was born with disabled feet. The doctors assured us that with treatment he would be able to walk normally — but would never run very well. The first three years of his life were spent in surgery, casts and braces. By the time he was eight, you wouldn’t know he had a problem when you saw him walk.

The children in our neighborhood ran around as most children do during play, and Joey would jump right in and run and play, too. Although I was a little worried about his state, we never told him that he probably wouldn’t be able to run as well as the other children. So he didn’t know it. Every day after school, he would run and jump crazily, laughing cheerfully with his friends. Before bed, he was delighted to share everything that he enjoyed with me, and the brightness on his face drove away all my anxiety.

In his seventh grade, the school planned to hold a cross-country race. On hearing the news, he jumped with joy, and he decided to go out for the cross-country team. What worried me most was the extreme strength and patience that was required for the race. However, his strong determination eventually changed my attitude towards the event. I made up mind to be in favor of him. Every day he trained with the team. He worked harder and ran more than any of the others — perhaps he sensed that the abilities that seemed to come naturally to so many others did not come naturally to him. Although the entire team runs, only the top seven runners have the potential to score points for the school. We didn’t tell him he probably would never make the team, so he didn’t know.

注意：

1. 续写词数应为150个左右；

2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

One day, he got a fever, and I advised him to have a rest.

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Two weeks later, the big day came.

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I clicked the link (点击链接), sign un here. This wouldn’t be my first half marathon (马拉松赛跑); I had run a flat half when I was thirty-eight. But that was eleven years ago. Now, it was November 2022, and I’d had a shoulder injury before, and I was turning fifty. So, as awful as running 13.1 miles seemed, I was going to do it.

I signed up for a women’s training group, a group of strangers with whom I would spend a few months preparing for the race, and then I was directed to sign up for the actual race. I imagined a course somewhere beautiful in Florida. Or perhaps in sunny California, I was shocked when the race website opened, and I was greeted with the words, “Zion at night, half marathon in the darkness.” In Zion? At night? Oh, no.

I looked at the website. Was it to late to quit? Actually, I had just signed up for a coaching group that was meant to “encourage me through running”. Giving up before I even started seemed like a terribly shameful thing to do. I looked through the photos of the race.

I lost all my confidence. Runners wearing headlights and running shoes filled the computer screen. I couldn’t do this, I thought. I hadn’t run on paths in Delaware. I hadn’t run on paths or up hills. I clicked onto the next photo and looked at the happy runners advancing alongside a frightening cliff (峭壁). I was also afraid of heights.

A text came through my phone. It was Nicole, our training group’s brave leader, a woman who has run hundred-mile marathons. This is what happens when you run a race with someone who has strong willpower. “Sign up for the 4 am start time,” she wrote.

As I filled in my name and address, I tried to think about how likely I was to get injured during training. Realistically, that was my best way to get out of this race. I filled out the form and started worrying. About everything.

But Nicole encouraged me, saying that she was with me in spirit on every run.

On the day of the race, we drove to Zion at 4 am.