Neal and I met during cross country practice at Colby High School. It was my sophomore year of XC and I was looking forward to the challenging season as our girl's team had a great chance of winning conference this year. I first saw Neal when I passed him from behind as the whole team ran a 3 mile route. I thought, "Man, maybe this isn't the sport for this guy." But I admired his persistence, as cross country is anything but an easy sport. Turns out, he felt the same way and decided to become one of our managers instead of one of our runners. He would stand at our mile mark in meets and time our miles. My sister had been friends with Andy and Neal before me, so I asked my sister to subtly suggest to Neal that he should text me. He did and I was so surprised at how easy it was to talk to him. There was nobody else in this world that I related more to and who listened to me like he did. The rest is history!

After a summer of persuasion and sometimes aggression, my Colby friends had finally convinced me to go out for the cross-country team my junior year of high school. I was astounded that someone would run for fun as I had only previously experienced it as a punishment before then. I went to the first practice and quickly found out that a mile-long run was only a warmup. The team consisted of Colby and Abbotsford kids so my adrenaline was pumping during the warmup as I met new people from the Abbotsford section of the team. We then went on a 5-mile run as our actual practice and it took everything I had to not keel over and tell one of my friends to pick me up on the side of the road when they finished practice. One thing that kept me going was this cute girl who was running with one of the seniors at the time that I hadn't met before. At this point, I was strongly considering quitting after that first practice but in my head I thought, "Maybe it's worth sticking out to see if I could talk to her." For that reason, I came back to the next practice. Coach Graun had a running and swimming practice laid out for the team and I was appalled that someone would be able to not only run which was a punishment in itself, but then get into a pool and swim four laps just to get back out and run some more. That was it. No love interest was worth sticking out that kind of wretchedness. However, this cute girl was worth trying to find a way to get to know so I swiftly became the manager of the cross-country team where I was tasked with gathering times at races and did not have to practice or compete with the team. Of course I was way too nervous to go up and talk to her so I just puffed out my chest a bit every time she walked by or looked in my direction and hoped my 5' 6", 150-pound, skinny build would do the talking. Well, I won't say it worked but I got a random text message from an unknown number one day and the rest is history, so you tell me!