Читать книгу I Am Nobody. Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life онлайн

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I had just turned fourteen and was away at a hockey tournament in Thunder Bay, Ontario. One afternoon, we had nothing to do between games and were hanging around in one of our hotel rooms. Somebody came up with the idea of having a push-up contest. There had been a time, when I was ten or eleven, when doing even just a handful of push-ups would have been difficult, if not impossible. I tried my best to get out of it, to hide, but when you’re my size (I was by then well over six feet tall) there is nowhere to hide. Eventually, near the end, I was called forward and forced to do my push-ups. To this day, I remember how shocked we all were when I finished second to Scotty Allan, a physical specimen of perfection.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, though, as I’d been quietly working very hard downstairs at home by myself to get my body into shape.

Less than a year later, our team was in Bloomington, Minnesota, for a tournament, and one of the billets we were staying with had a weight room set up in his basement. A couple of guys on our team who were there couldn’t believe it when I went over to the weight bench and effortlessly pressed the entire set. And the thing is, they were shocked that I even went over to the bench, let alone pushed the weights with ease.