Dora Kellert was the school’s spelling bee champion, winner of the reading contest at the public library three summers in a row and the playground grand champion in chess. She was a straight-A student.
Though Dora was talented, she was no good at sports. She could not figure out in which direction to kick the soccer ball. She was no good at baseball or basketball either. It wasn’t until last year, when she was eleven years old, that she learned how to ride a bike. And even then she had to use training wheels.
“I’ll never be good at sports,” she thought one day as she lay on her bed staring at the shelf her father had made to hold her trophies (奖杯). “How I wish I could win something, anything, even marbles (弹珠).”
At the word “marbles,” she sat up, “That’s it. Maybe I could be good at playing marbles.” She jumped out of bed and found a can full of her brother’s marbles. “Yes,” she thought. “I could play marbles, and marbles is a sport.” At that moment she realized that she had only three weeks to practice. The playground championship was coming up. She had a lot to do.
To strengthen her wrists (腕关节), she decided to do twenty push-ups on her fingertips, five at a time. By the end of the first set she was breathing hard. She did one more set and decided that was enough push-ups for the first day. She squeezed (握) a rubber eraser one hundred times, hoping it would strengthen her thumb (大拇指). This seemed to work because the next day her thumb was painful. She could hardly hold a marble in her hand, so Dora rested that day and listened to her brother’s tips on how to shoot.
After school the next day she practiced three hours straight. After practice, she squeezed the eraser for an hour. Practice, practice, practice. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Dora got better and even beat her brother for the first time.
注意：1．续写词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
Time flew and soon came the big day.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Dancing home, she placed the trophy on the middle of the shelf.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________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!
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________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.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Today, I teach baseball in a high school.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________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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Super Roy
“You’re a halfback(中卫).” I looked over my shoulder at the empty field behind me. “Me?” I asked, pointing to my chest
“Yes,” the coach said again. “You’re a halfback. Yep, no doubt about it.”
The coach’s name was Super Roy. Someone told me his real name once, but it never stuck. When I got to practice that day I was a small kid with little athletic experience or skill. I wondered if I belonged there at all and what Super Roy had seen in me that I didn’t see in myself.
“Are you sure I’m a halfback?” I asked him the next day.
“Let me see,” he said, standing back to have a good glance at me, which made me nervous about what he would say
“Yep. You’re a halfback. Might as well get used to it.”
“Okay,” I said, puzzled but beginning to accept the idea, strange as it seemed.
Later that day we started running plays. Time after time the quarterback put the ball right in my hands. Me, the silly fellow who had to be reminded how many points a touchdown was worth. I expected to go all season without touching the ball. I expected to be a bench warmer, and now the ball was in my hands—literally.
Super Roy had a routine he did every day. As practice came to an end, he would pick one of the players to step forward. The player had to recite a quote Super Roy had given him the day before. It was a very important moment in practice. No one wanted to forget his quote in front of the whole team.
After practice was over one day, Super Roy spoke to me. “Your turn tomorrow,” he said. “Ready for your quote?”
“Okay,” I said, stressed in deep concentration. “I’m ready.”
“Well, here it is: ‘It’s not the size of the man you play, it’s how you play the man.’ Got it?” “Yes, Coach.”
Super Roy winked at me and gave me a pat on the shoulder. “And I believe the quote will help you make a miracle in the inter school match next month,” he added.
On the way home, my mind played like a broken record, which made me murmur the words repeatedly.
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。
Paragraph 1: There came the practice time the next day.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2: I stepped into Super Roy’s office after the match.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________On a bright Saturday, my peaceful lunchtime was suddenly interrupted when my dad surprised me with an unplanned idea. I couldn’t hide my annoyance as what was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday turned into a day focused on football — a sport I wasn’t very excited about.
Many of my friends loved sports, while I preferred to find comfort in the pages of a good book rather than run around on a football court. My lack of interest resulted in average performance on the team, and I often felt like I was a problem for both my coach and teammates.
Things changed last week when our coach announced a coming match against the champions scheduled for a month later. The realization that this important game would have a big audience only made me more anxious. The fear of possibly letting down the team weighed on me.
Determined to make a positive impact, I decided to practice hard every day. My motivation came from wanting to help the team and to overcome the self-doubt affecting my performance.
As the match day approached, my teammates seemed unsure about including me in the lineup (阵容). I wouldn’t have minded sitting out, but the situations were different. With one player short, they reluctantly (不情愿地) included me, and The Thunder Strikers, our team, stepped onto the field to enjoy cheers from the crowd.
The pressure was intense. The game started, and within the ten minutes, I received a warning. Before long, the referee showed me a second yellow card, forcing me to leave the field. When I got back into the game, the score was tied, and the next goal would decide the winner.
As the ball came toward me, I felt a bit scared. My teammates seemed tired, and the other team really wanted to win. With great courage, I kicked the ball. The opponents (对手), maybe not expecting much from me because of my earlier struggles, were surprised when the ball went past the goalkeeper.
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。
The Thunder Strikers won!
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________After this win, football became different for me.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________No one is born a winner. People make themselves into winners by their own efforts. I learned this lesson from an experience many years ago. I took the head coaching job at a school in Baxley, Georgia. It was a small school with a weak football program. The school took part in the league matches every year. However, it never ended well. We were more of the audience, watching and cheering instead of sweating out in the fields.
Fortunately, the school held the tradition that the school’s old team was to play against the new team at the end of spring practice. For lack of resources, the old team bad no coach, and they didn’t even practice to prepare for the game.
I was assigned (指派) as the coach of the new team, which was why I was excited. I believed that we were going to win, but to my disappointment, we were defeated. I couldn’t believe I had got into such a situation. Thinking hard about it, I tried to figure out the reason and what I should do next.
It didn’t take long before I came to realize that my team was depending on me. Without proper guidance or previous experience, my team was at a loss what to do. I had to change my attitude so that I could bring out the best in them about their ability and potential.
I would let my action do the talking. First, I started doing anything I could to help them build a little pride. I could see their spirits lifted, with their head held high in great confidence. Most importantly, I began to treat them like winners. Only when they regarded themselves as winners could they willingly invest time and energy.
This summer, the other teams enjoyed their vacations.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Six months later, football season started.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . 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 husband Larry and I have always had our basic values in common, but our interests are far apart. I love the arts, especially opera. He’s a huge sports fan of hockey (曲棍球). His big passion is NHL hockey. He’s shared season tickets with his friends for years.
There were times when we attended the games with other couples. The rest of our group was enthusiastic about the game, even the women. They knew all the players and how to pronounce their long names. I enjoyed participating in the National Anthem, but aside from the meal, that was the only thing I enjoyed about our hockey nights. Instead of appreciating the good seats we had, I’d complain that it was too cold there. When the game started, my phone would be on my lap. Most of the time, I’d be texting or daydreaming. Sometimes, my texting would be interrupted when the home team scored. I knew they scored because everyone jumped up and exchanged high-fives and shouts.
What was so exciting about a group of grown men on ice hitting something with a stick? It was beyond me. I started to wonder. Why was I the only one not enjoying myself? As I looked around at thousands of people cheering and getting increasingly excited, I decided to at least give it a try — for my husband’s sake, if not for my own.
It took a few games, but soon I learned who the goalie (守门员) was, who our latest player was, who had been traded and from where. When the other team scored, I eventually felt great disappointment with the rest of my crowd. I searched the program to see which part of the globe our players had come from.
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。
I was surprised that I began to like the games I watched.
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I felt excited when I heard that our city would have the first women’s hockey team.
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9 . 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。
When I was six, I played my first soccer game. It was a real game, complete with coaches, uniforms, and parents cheering from the sidelines.
Our two teams, Team One and Team Two, seemed pretty evenly matched, at least in the beginning. The first period ended without a single goal scored by either side. We were all still learning how to play the game properly, and our inexperience ran through this part. We stumbled over the ball, tripped over our own feet, and often completely missed our kicks. But what mattered most was that we were having fun, pure and simple.
The second quarter brought a significant change in the game. Our coach decided to pull out most of our starting players and put in the substitutes (替补), except for me—I was left guarding the goal. On the other side, Team Two’s coach decided to keep their best players on the field, which made things even more challenging for us. It seemed that winning suddenly become essential, even for us six-year-olds.
Team Two started to rule the game, and I found myself surrounded by their players whenever they came near our goal. I was determined to do my best, but it was tough. I couldn’t match the skills of three or four other really good players. Team Two began to score, one goal after another. I threw myself in front of the ball with all the energy I could gather, trying desperately to stop them but in vain.
The pressure was mounting, and I could feel my frustration building with every goal that slipped past me. I shouted, I ran, and I dove, but they kept scoring. I gave it everything I had, but it seemed useless.
My parents were there on the sidelines, and I could see them in the crowd. As the game progressed, I could see the change in my father’s expression. He had been urging me to try harder, yelling advice and encouragement from the sidelines, but now he seemed different. I could see the pain in his eyes, the pain he felt seeing me struggle. It made me want to cry.
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。
Team Two scored their fourth goal, and it was half-time break.
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In that moment, what my father said meant the world to me.
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My dad and I had been looking forward to the Stale cross-country race of my senior year of high school, which would be the climax (顶点) of my existence.
I was the fastest runner on my team, and I was supposed to make it into the top fifteen. We had been working towards this race for three years. It was everything to me, and it was everything to my dad. He was a runner and was wild with joy by my success in running. He made it to every race, even flying home early from business trips to see me run. I always listened for his voice, which rang above the crowd-telling me to relax my arms, calling out my time. He pushed me. He cheered for me. He believed in me. We spent countless hours on the sandy canals of Arizona. Breathing in the dust of the desert, the blossoms of the orange trees, and the terrible smell of the dairy farm, we made our way across the city. We pounded miles and miles into our running shoes, marking with every step the path to greatness. It was a journey that was just ours. A dream passed on from one generation to the next.
Then the big day came. It was hotter than normal - too hot. My throat felt like a field of cotton, cracked with the summer heat, as I waited for the gun to fire. I gazed out at the crowd; dozens of familiar faces from church and school flickered across my view. They had come for me. They were counting on me. I saw my dad set his watch, worry and excitement etched across his face. With the sound of a gunshot, the race began.
For the first two and half miles, I felt great. I had never before been so ready for something. The weeks leading up to the race were filled with hard practices and a strict diet. The scorching sun beat upon my back, blinding me with its brilliance. Nothing was going to stop me, though.
注意：1. 所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
However, without warning, my strength was running out.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I whispered, “I’m so sorry I disappointed you, Dad.”
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