Undergraduate / Essay explaining why you have chosen to continue onto post-secondary [2]

This essay has a 250 word limit and is on an application I have to submit in a couple of days. Please let me know about any changes I should make. Thanks in advance.

"Knowledge is Power". I have read this phrase a hundred times over as I enter the main-gate of my school. This phrase, in a semi-circular alignment on the signboard, is the Motto of my school. I have been told the importance of knowledge and have witnessed it myself.

My father often reiterates the importance of education and how I must value it. He has narrated the stories of how knowledge has helped him reach where he is today. He never has second thoughts about an opportunity to learn. He encourages me to avail any such prospects and make best use of it.

During the farewell of Grade 12 students, the School Principal emphasized in his speech the value of knowledge we obtained in our years of study. He called it the 'soul of society' that passes down from one generation to the next and is what enables us to achieve our goals.

Each time I enter the school campus, the three words of the School Motto phrase inspires me. It reminds me that knowledge is what drives and keeps the world running. Knowledge helps leap over barriers and gain wider perspectives. It is what sets us free from the fetters to reach our full potential.

As I progress to pursue a post-secondary education, I intend to do exactly the same. I look forward to learning new skills and ideas to grasp abstract concepts and gain a better understanding of the world to become a productive member of society.

Undergraduate / Cricket Coaching Classes; Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. [2]

Any suggestions/corrections I should make?
Is the story I'm using good enough/convincing?

Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?
A failure that hit me hard, was one which I faced when I started Cricket Coaching Classes in my hometown. I belong to a very cricket crazy country: India. In India, one can always find a group of people playing cricket on the streets, in parking lots, on rooftops, etc. Now I didn't exactly do all of those things, but I was a huge cricket fan. I played cricket with my friends, neighbors and even family members. At times, I even played by myself in my bedroom; tossing the ball against the wall and hitting it with my cricket bat once it came back. Indeed I was cricket-crazy, and so when a cricket training center opened in my hometown, I signed up immediately. I eagerly waited for the coaching classes to commence, and kept everything ready for the first day of training; I lined up my cricket bats, collected my cricket balls, and washed my sports outfit and sports shoes.

The first day of training came. I reached 10 minutes before the reporting time, and then stood in a line with another 30 boys, impatiently waiting to show my talent and abilities to the coach who would come to train us. The coach arrived on the dot, and started the training with some jogging and other warm-up exercises. After that was done, he began the first training session - catching practice. He made me and the other boys form a circle around him, and he tossed a cricket to ball to each one of us, and we had to catch it, and throw it back at him. Now 'catching' was one thing of cricket I, hitherto, considered a piece of cake. But I failed miserably at catching practice. 90% of the time I would fail to hold onto the ball, if at all I could get the ball into my hands. At times, I would see the ball land perfectly into my hands, and then jump back out. Now I wasn't the only one who performed so poorly; I had another 2 dozen others with me. Our coach chided us and then divided us into smaller groups, and made us practice only catching for the rest of the 2 hours. At the end of it, he lectured us on how we were failing at one of the most important 'organs of cricket'. I wasn't the only one who did poorly in the catching practice, but the failure of others in no way comforted me. I had a great a passion for Cricket, and so this failure left me dispirited. But then in the following days, I started to view my failure from a different perspective and questioned myself on why I performed poorly. This introspection enabled me to learn some important lessons in life.

Firstly, I learnt that I should never be overconfident. I had played cricket for many years, with many different people, on many different types of terrain. Having this experience, I thought the coaching classes wouldn't be different at all, and would be a walk in the park for me. I became overconfident of my abilities, and so my overconfidence made my debacle worse. Secondly, I learnt that I should be open to criticism. While the coach chided us for our poor performance, he frequently reiterated that our technique was wrong, and showed us repeatedly the better way of catching the cricket ball. Though he might've not been speaking to us in a friendly manner, he was right; he was guiding us on the right path.

I didn't expect to face failure in cricket, so it hit me hard when I did fail. But what I never expected, was to learn some important lessons in life, from one of the most disheartening failures I have ever faced.