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。
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 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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_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________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.
Paragraph 1:Soon after, the race started.
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Paragraph 2:
Then came the last award, and to my surprise, my name was announced.
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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.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
But Nicole encouraged me, saying that she was with me in spirit on every run.
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On the day of the race, we drove to Zion at 4 am.
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Last fall, I came up with a good idea to tell my friend Melanie that she and I should enter a backcountry ski mountaineering race. The mountain is 40 miles from Crested Butte to Aspen, Colorado, and it required us to race as a team. Neither of us had ever done a ski race, but we’d always been good partners on mountain bikes, so I thought we’d be well-matched in the ski race, too.
However, on our first long training day together, Melanie dropped me again and again. As she disappeared out of sight on our last climb, I complained to myself, “Why had I come up with this stupid idea? Why wasn’t she waiting?” When I finally caught up, Melanie asked, “Are you OK?” I opened my mouth to respond and — oh, no — tears (眼泪) began running down my face. I felt sad and embarrassed. Crying was a behavior I connected with myself as a beginner who did most often in the years when I was learning to mountain bike. Seeing this, Melanie said with motherly concern, “I think you peed to have a rest and eat something.”
She was right. Rest and sugar improved my mood. Finally, we began going down the mountain together and we joked about my tears. In the days that followed, we kept training hard for the race day.
Despite the difficult start to our training, on race day, Melanie and I proved to be a good pair. The race began at midnight, and for six hours we schussed (直线滑降) together as a team through the darkness. But as the sun began to rise, we found ourselves pushing as hard as we could to make it to Star Pass, the high point of the race, by the important 7 am. Unluckily, we lost the race because we were 2 minutes late.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A painful block formed in my throat (喉咙).
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After a few minutes, I felt less sad.
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Emma was very excited Today was the championship baseball game! The winners would all get trophies(奖杯) and be the number one players in the town. Emma decided to bring home a trophy to put on her shelf. She had never won a trophy before.
She put on her red uniform and pulled her hair through the back of her baseball cap. She picked up her gloves and looked in the mirror. “I hope I get a hit today,” she said to herself.
On the way to the field, Emma felt nervous.
“Are you feeling OK, Emma?” her mother asked.
“I really don’t want to strike out(三击不中出局),” Emma said.
“Just keep your eye on the ball and don’t feel afraid. You can do it,” Emma’s mother said.
Emma was a great hitter in practice, but she had never hit a ball during a game. She always struck out.
When the game started, Emma cheered loudly for her friends. She caught a fly ball in the Outfield, and everyone cheered for her. Emma struck out when it was her turn to hit the ball, but her team was doing well.
The game was tied(平局), and it was her team’s last chance to score. The team’s coach encouraged, “Believe in yourselves, and you are the best.” Frankie was up first, and he hit the ball hard to get on base(垒). Next up was Henry, but he struck out. Kara hit the ball, but she was tagged out at first base. Frankie was able to run to third. That meant he could score and win the game if the next batter(击球手) got a good hit. Emma was the team’s last hope.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Emma stepped up to the base.
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Emma’s team won!
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On a winter Sunday good for skiing, Sue arrived at their holiday chalet (棚屋) with joy. Sue’s skis were sticking out behind her. Mark, another skier, tripped over Sue’s skis. Before Sue could apologize, Mike shouted, “Your skis are in the way. You’ve got big smelly feet!” In view of his attitude, Sue ignored him. Mark lost face and was more angry.
The ski lift took all the skiers to the top of the mountain. The hard snow of the piste (滑雪道) was below them. Then Sue skied down the mountain. As a good skier, she didn’t fall over. Mark, along with his good friend David, was watching her with envy and anger. They were also good skiers but they didn’t know Sue very well. “She’s good,” David said. “But we’re better,” Mark responded with dissatisfaction.
The young people skied all day. They enjoyed themselves and forgot everything. On Wednesday morning, the young people were waiting for the ski lift when their teacher announced a ski race. The race would be arranged for the last day of the holiday on a long and difficult ten-kilometer piste. Everybody wanted to win! They went up the mountain, put on their skis and skied down the piste, practicing for the race. Sue skied fast, so did Mark and David. Obviously, these three became powerful opponents.
It was Saturday and the race was going to be held in the afternoon. Sue was hungry and left her skis at the side of a café. She sat down and ordered lunch. Later, David and Mark came in. They also headed to the side to put their skis there. Mark noticed Sue’s skis and aimed a kick angrily at them. Then he found a screw (螺丝) on Sue’s ski was loose, unsure whether it was caused by the force or it was like that originally. “Sue’s skis won’t work. We’re sure to win,” Mark said and pointed. They smiled knowingly at each other.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Finally came the time of the race and everyone was excited.
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Maybe feeling guilty or nervous, Mark made a mistake and fell down when Sue approached him.
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