Conner Spence

From an early age, I have always been competitive. I always needed to be in the front, leading in whatever it was people were doing. And while that competitive nature has had both positive and negative aspects, one way it has helped me succeed was in sports.

I have always been involved in athletics, with sports ranging from lacrosse to swimming and wrestling. Of the sports I played, however, my favorite was definitely wrestling. I started wrestling my 7th-grade year and I will be honest, I was absolutely terrible. But I still loved it. I loved the raw competitive nature of the sport. It was essentially a one-on-one battle, and it was all about you and your skill, strength, and determination. So even though I did terribly, I stuck to it. Throughout my middle school years, I slowly got better. I went to every practice and wrestled in every tournament I could. But it wasn't until high school that I actually started to win consistently. Winning, of course, only fueled my competitive nature. Every tournament our team went to, every match, that competitive nature pushed me to be my best. And even though I sometimes fell short, the only thing that really mattered was competing. My freshman and sophomore years, for example, I made it through the area tournament and to sectionals, where I was knocked out of the bracket. Those losses fueling my determination to come back and win. My junior year, I made it all the way to the state tournament but lost in an overtime match, one win away from placing. But I continued to practice, determined to place my senior year. And I did, placing third at state my senior year. The entire time, I was fueled by my competitive nature and fought for every win.