In Too Deep
Page 7
Turning down her place at the Royal Academy of Sport for Girls was one of the hardest things Chloe Humphries has ever had to do, but her parents’ financial situation meant she had no choice. Months later, Chloe is still devastated. Then, an unexpected letter arrives in the post … Chloe has been offered a full scholarship to attend! With a nervous and excited heart, Chloe sets off with her beloved horse, Honey. However, Chloe will be starting a whole two terms later than her classmates. Competition is fierce and with the showjumping competition looming, Chloe struggles to find her place in the Academy.
Can the new girl overcome her fears and find a way to outshine her equestrian rivals?
Can hurdling champion Josie find a way to improve her grades as well as follow her gold medal dreams at the Academy?
With the Royal Academy of Sport for Girls end-of-year Athletics State Finals fast approaching, golden girl of the track, Josie Ingram, and her teammates are training hard. It seems like nothing can stop them from reaching their dreams. However, when Josie finds out she is falling behind in her schoolwork, her world is turned upside down. If she doesn’t improve her grades in the upcoming exams, she won’t be allowed to compete at the State Finals! Forced to concentrate on her studies and banned from any track practice sessions, Josie feels like giving up. Everything she has trained for will mean nothing if she can’t compete.
Can Josie commit to her schoolwork and hold on to her chances of a podium finish? Or will she accept an easy offer that spells trouble?
Read on for an extract from
The Royal Academy of Sport for Girls: Running Free
I gently reached up and swept a wisp of my long, strawberry blonde hair away from my eyes. I inhaled and exhaled in deep, measured breaths as I ran. My feet pounded along the path in the rhythm of a trotting horse. Clip-clop clip-clop. I was being careful to keep my pace steady – this wasn’t a sprint.
I glanced at the sky as I ran. It was only eight o’clock and the sun was already sparkling high in the sky. Heat was radiating down onto my shoulders in the warm spring air. It would be summer again soon. How could it be summer again? I’ll admit, my pale, freckly skin is not a fan of the scorching Australian summer. Even with suncream, it will redden throughout the day and either produce more freckles or a hot burn. Never a tan.
Up ahead, I could see Isabella bobbing along the path. You would never have picked Issy as one of the best runners in the state. She was tiny. She had short blonde hair, cut into a pixie bob. Her limbs were muscly, yet thin. She ran longer distances than I did – she had the fitness and speed for the 400 metres and the 800 metres. A little dynamo package.
I wasn’t so good at the longer distances. Nope, I wasn’t patient enough for all that pacing and counting breaths. I’m more of a quick-dash kind of a girl – I was the 100-metre sprint as well as the 100-metre hurdle champion in my age division in the state. They called me ‘golden girl’ because nobody could beat me, and my hair always shone red-gold like the medals I won. I smiled to myself. I didn’t want to be arrogant – nobody likes a show-off – but you couldn’t deny I was the best at what I did. I am Josephine Ingram, lightning bolt runner!
As I snaked my way along the school path, I took in some of the sights around me. We were doing endurance training today. Usually our training was focused on sprints and our specialties, which in my case was hurdles. But occasionally, we did longer distance running to help with our fitness. We had to run our way through the whole campus and back up to the oval again. In most schools that wouldn’t be a very big run. But at the Royal Academy of Sport for Girls, it was a great distance. The Academy was huge – it housed Olympic-quality facilities for the best sporting girls in the country.
I ran down the path past the gigantic aquatic centre and past the boarding houses. I wasn’t a boarder, I lived at home locally, but many of the girls in the school had come from the country or interstate. Those girls lived on campus in what I can only describe as mansions!
Once past the boarding houses, the landscape opened up into a vast grassy space. I was heading towards the equestrian stables now, where acres of grass rolled down to the southern end of the school grounds. The grass felt crunchy and dry beneath my feet, a sure sign that this warm spring was about to give birth to a scorching, hot summer.
I breathed harder as the sheer length of the run started to exhaust me.
‘C’mon, slowpoke!’ a voice laughed as it rushed past me.
I smiled as Nina ran ahead of me. She was my other best friend at the Academy, along with Issy. We had all hit it off immediately in Term One when we began training together. None of us knew anyone else at the Academy and we instantly became inseparable. Nina is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met – I’ve never heard her say a mean word about anyone.
I shook my head gently as I remembered those early days at the Academy. I couldn’t believe it was so many months ago. And, here I was, in my final term of my first year. After this term, we’d move up to Year 8 and no longer be the babies of the school. It had been the best year of my life.
By the time I’d circled round the equestrian paddocks and snaked my way back through the school, I was exhausted. I could see my friends bent over, panting and huffing as they gulped down water on the oval’s grassy centre.
‘That was torture!’ I huffed as I finished my run.
‘No, it wasn’t, Josie, it was awesome,’ Issy giggled. ‘I want to do it again!’
‘It was rather invigorating,’ said Nina, catching her breath.
‘Invigorating?’ I laughed. ‘I love how you use big words to describe everything, Neens.’ Not only was Nina a champion runner, she was one of the smartest girls in the whole year. She was a maths whiz and also a genius in English. A lot of our classes were streamed at the Academy, which meant I wasn’t in any school classes with Nina. Let’s just say, schoolwork wasn’t my strongest talent. But I didn’t care. You don’t need 100 per cent in English to run in the Olympics, do you?
‘Girls, start your warm-down!’ Coach Jack yelled.
Issy, Nina and I sat on the ground and began to stretch out our legs, still panting.
‘Do you reckon we’ll get our Maths assessment back today?’ Nina asked.
‘You wish!’ I teased.
‘I hope I did okay. Mum said I can’t watch TV for the whole weekend if I don’t pass,’ Issy said, chewing gently on her lip.
‘You’re lucky to get TV at all!’ Nina said. ‘My mum only lets us watch it in the school holidays!’
‘Ugh, mums can be the worst,’ Issy scoffed.
My face reddened and my chest began to tighten a little. I could feel the heat in my cheeks and I quickly looked around for a distraction from the conversation. Issy’s eyes met mine. I could see them fill with panic.
‘Oh, I mean … I didn’t mean … I’m sorry, Josie,’ she whispered.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, waving my hand casually in the air. ‘Dad lets me do pretty much whatever I want! TV anytime, ice-cream for breakfast – he’s the coolest.’
Nina and Issy nodded.
‘He’s pretty awesome, your dad,’ Nina smiled.
A bell pierced through the silence.
‘That’s the warning bell. We’d better go and get changed if we are going to make it to class on time,’ Nina said, finishing off her quad stretch.
We bundled ourselves to our feet and took final swigs from our water bottles. I turned back to the oval and gazed at the amazing track and field equipment we had at the school.
‘I wish we didn’t have to do the school part,’ I said wistfully. ‘Imagine if we could just do sport, all day.’
‘That would get boring,’ said Nina.
‘And exhausting!’ Issy laughed.
I shook my head defiantly. ‘No, girls. That would be heaven.’
A very special thank you to Natasha Ramsden for your expert advice in the creation of this story. And thank you to Rory Brown for sharing your own triumphs and challenges in following the black
line.
Ever since she learnt to hold a pen, Laura Sieveking has loved creating stories. She remembers hiding in her room as a six-year-old, writing a series of books about an unlikely friendship between a princess and a bear.
As an adult, Laura has spent the vast majority of her career working in publishing as an editor. After several years, she decided to put down her red pen and open up her laptop to create a series of her own.
The Academy series is a combination of Laura’s favourite things – writing, friendship and sport, all of which take her back to her happy childhood memories of gymnastics training and competitions.
Laura lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
The Royal Academy of Sport for Girls: In Too Deep
ePub ISBN – 9781925324631
First published by Random House Australia in 2017
Copyright © Laura Sieveking, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Random House book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator: Sieveking, Laura
Title: In Too Deep
ISBN: 9781925324631 (ebook)
Series: Royal Academy of Sport for Girls; 3
Target Audience: For primary school age
Subjects: Swimming – Training – Juvenile fiction
Swimming – Tournaments – Juvenile fiction
Swimming – Juvenile fiction
Children’s stories
Top cover image by jeep2499/Shutterstock
Bottom cover image by Yanlev/Shutterstock
Cover design by Kirby Armstrong
Ebook by Firstsource