1 . Directions:   Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. ultimately B. crowned     C. string       D. distancing   E. secure       F. rewarded G. spectacular H. prominence     I. edge             J. sustaining     K. proudly

Just Focus on Your Own Way

Head held high as she took the court moments after her Chinese team entered the arena, she waved and smiled in several directions. She then paced around the floor observing China’s championship opponents from Serbia (塞尔维亚). She     1     sang through the national anthem, guided her team to defend the title and made her own history, too. Lang Ping became the first person to win back-to-back World Cup championships both as a player (1981,1985) and as a coach (2015, 2019).

Lang, a significant cultural icon in China, rose to    2     as a volleyball player in the early 1980s. She, along with her teammates, was     3     four-time world champions in international competitions between 1981 and 1985. This    4     of victories pushed women’s volleyball to the forefront of Chinese sports discussions. Before this time, only table tennis had taken on a characterization as the sport in which the Chinese boasted about an outright     5    . As the leading outside hitter (主攻手), Lang herself was honored as the MVP of women’s volleyball at the 1984 Olympics.

After she retired from playing, Lang moved to the United States to experience what she called a “normal life”,     6     herself from her national fame. In 1987, she started coaching the women’s volleyball team at the University of New Mexico. Having honed her coaching skills with these young athletes over a five-year period, Lang became the head coach of China women’s national team in 1995.   She     7     led the team to a silver medal at the 1996 Olympics and a second place at the World Championship two years later. In 2005, Lang set her sights on a new challenge: coaching the U.S. women’s national volleyball team. The first foreign female to coach a major sport for the United States, she devoted herself to the job, despite     8     criticism back home. Lang returned to coach the Chinese national team for the second time in 2013. After guiding the team to the gold medal at the 2016 Olympics, she became the first person in volleyball history to     9     Olympic titles both as a player and as a coach. However, when asked about her success, Lang just said, “It’s not important for me to make history. But I’m so happy for the girls. They trained very hard.”

Lang’s     10     life is displayed in a recently announced documentary entitled The Iron Hammer, named after her nickname. The film not only tells her story but showcases her internal strength and commitment to greatness in the sport. Furthermore, her ability to break down gender barriers has inspired women to achieve new heights in the sport, a legacy that still inspires hope in the youth of today.