Overcoming the Odds

In life we’re told many times by several people we can’t do it, or we’ll never make it and that we have to accept the negative people and accept being told "no" because nobody is ever getting a "yes" all the time. So we take that as motivation to strive and hope for a way to prove them wrong.

I’ve been living in Lethbridge all of my life and have met all kinds of people with all different emotions and attitudes: negative, positive, sad, happy, angry and depressed. Each person I’ve met on my journey here I’ve taken them as either a blessing or a lesson. I’ve learned that people can change up on you at any point in time and that’s the scary thing with life, we can trust and believe all we want, but in the end it really comes down to that person you trust and believe in and if they’re loyal and truthful. 

I’ve been playing hockey for 15 years of my life and it’s the same as I said before, every person I’ve met and played with in this sport is a blessing or a lesson. I’ve always had a goal when I was younger to play up in higher levels of hockey like AA and A and I’ve went through many emotions trying to achieve it. I’ve came across the negative people saying I’d never make it because I'm not this and I’m not that, but never once did I stop. I kept going and I wanted to prove everyone wrong. I stayed up countless nights stressing and worrying and trying to find ways to be better than everyone else, but really the only way to be better than anyone is a good attitude and positive work ethic.

I’ve run into situations in the dressing rooms arguing about skill and not making a team and that’s what I explained in the first part of this, we run into situations in life all the time basically everyday, but hockey has taught me to overcome any of the challenges in my life. My biggest challenge has been overcoming my challenge of my weight. Ever since I’ve been young I’ve always wanted to be the fit kid and the fastest kid in the class, but I never could and I never understood until I got older and realized It’s because I’m a big guy and the others aren’t, so I started wanting to be like them. This is where hockey and my daily life come in because hockey people said I couldn’t make teams because I was too big and slow and you get chirped about it in your daily life for no reason because that’s people, that’s what they do because they see your success or your popularity and try to bring you down to their level. I never wanted to be that low and kept my hopes high to overcome these negative people to see a positive in my life.

Hope is a huge word to describe my journey through all of this because I’ve hoped to escape the people and escape the negativity, but all I truly had to hope for was a positive mindset and hope I could overcome the negative people and negative odds. I hoped for it all and with just as little as hoping for it...it worked. I became the captain of my AA team my first year in AA and I will never forget it. I never once rubbed it into anybody’s face or bragged about it, I just let life go on and let them see my success and hope they’d take my struggle as a lesson. I will always love to tell this story to many because hope is all we need to overcome any obstacles or any negative people or situations we run into in our lives.

-Kadon