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 . 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.

3 . 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!”

4 . 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 ______.”

5 . The first Olympic Games at Olympia were held in 776 BC. They were held _______ four years from 776 BC to 393 AD. In _______ Greece, games were _______ connected to the worship(崇拜)of the gods and heroes. They were also held as part of religious ceremonies(典礼) to _______ dead heroes. But from the beginning the games at Olympia served to _______ the Greek sense of national unity. So every four years over 1,100 years, thousands of   _______ stopped all wars and _______ to a small sanctuary(圣殿) in northwestern Greece for five days in the late summer for _______ reason-to watch the Olympic Games. During that time, _______ from all over the Greek world competed in a number of athletic __________ and worshipped the gods at Olympic. The athletes competed not for __________ or material benefits, __________ only for the honor of being Olympic visitor. Like our Olympics, __________ athletes were heroes who put their hometowns on the map. However, unlike our Olympics, only free men who spoke Greek could compete, instead of athletes from any country and the games were __________ held at Olympic instead of moving around to different places every time.

The ancient Olympics had a __________ variety（种类) of games. Many of these are the ancestors(原型) of our modern Olympic Games and had rules and playing conditions.