Rugby is a sport ingrained in my culture and my family. Played by generations and generations of welsh people, the pitch like a home to us, and the match lasting our whole lives. The game opens a door to a community and friendships that last for a lifetime. The sport requires all players to put their bodies on the line for a win, with harsh tackles and rucks, sores and bruises are the regular and injuries are constant. I fell in love with the sport. The strength and comradery it required. I melted into the early mornings and late nights, running step after step, and digging deep to improve. I would never miss a practice, waiting through the long hours of the day till I would get to practice. One morning I woke up and both my legs were in pain, it took all my energy to just get out of bed, I dismissed it as muscle soreness and moved on semi-limping around the house. Practice rolled around and I thought nothing of it, once again dismissing it as soreness once again. Practice started, as usual, we warmed up, conditioning went as usual despite the pain still coming from my legs. I began ruck practice and a few seconds into the 4th or 5th ruck, a horrifically sharp feeling shot through my body. I keeled over onto the grass, gritting my teeth to keep back tears. I had dislocated my knee, I couldn't walk for nearly a month. I cried, not from pain, but because all the strength and speed I had was now gone. It took months of physical therapy and frustrating setbacks, and finally, after multiple months, I returned to rugby, stronger and faster than before. It took earlier mornings and later nights, all of which paid off.

In 2016, I remember seeing cars lined up outside of gas stations and grocery stores, all of them there to buy what they would need to survive. Things kids in Texas learn at a young age, always have a box full of canned goods, water, flashlights, batteries, and a first aid kit. Little did I know, as I surveyed the lines of cars and grocery carts full of cans, what the following days would look like, and how they would echo through and haunt my mind like a spirit for years to come. I was out of school for weeks, and instead of watching cartoons, my eyes were glued to the news. For days I watched my city fill with water. All-day and All night rain would pound down onto the roof, the wind howling, glass shaking, and the constant flood and tornado alerts going off. Where the road once was a great rushing river now sat roaring, the wind folding it into waves. Water from outside sloshing under our door. I could hear helicopters and sirens echoing through our streets, the shouts from rescue boats to homes submerged. About a week in, my brother and I walked to a local church that had been turned into a shelter, across the street homes with only their roofs above water haunted the shelter. We got to work, sorting and folding clothes that had been donated, and helping the kitchen to heat water and food. I was 11 at the time, and even 6 years later the sound of flood alerts send a chill down my spine. But, since I've done my best to help younger houstonians learn how to react to storm alerts and how to be prepared for the worst through scouting.

My favorite art piece is Cy Twombly's Blackboard paintings. Personally when I first saw them I imagined an academic growing more and more frustrated and taking it out on the blackboard drawing swirls and scratches. For centuries blackboards have been used in classrooms to teach, professor pouring their life's work onto them, the sound of soft mathematicians chalk echoing throughout the classroom, and at the day erasing them leaving only dust and the slight shadow of what was there. Blackboards hold the history of human knowledge, they hang on the wall in all their glory, a large black void with so much potential. Many of humanity's greatest discovery's have been uncovered on these boards, holding the worlds knowledge in chalk. In Cy Twombly's exhibition, large blackboards covered with scribbles and scratches covering the walls surround the beholder, the swirls dance from board to board. I could almost hear the sound of soft chalk as the swirls continue. Walking through the room of boards feels like walking through the mind of an academic going through the creative process, circling back to ideas, but also the fluid swirls that feel like a dance and the blossoming of new ideas.