As many of you may already know, I've played a lot of basketball in my days. I've played ever since I was in 2nd grade, and have been able to travel all across this lovely country playing the game I love ever since. Being tall gave me some advantages of course, bit I was missing that extra layer of coaching to teach me better fundamentals. My dad was a great teacher, but it was hard to put those teachings into practice without a hoop. When I was in 4th grade, my basketball career hit, to use a film term, the first major plot point.
It was Halloween, and my school had its annual costume parade; I was dressed as Frankenstein. As I had fun with all of my friends that day, my parents were approached by the father of one of my classmates. He asked them if I played basketball, and if I would like to play on his team. He asked permission to call me and ask me as well. A few days later, our phone rang and I spoke to this strange guy for a few minutes. As our conversation was ending, I was invited to come practice with his team. These practices were nothing like I had ever experienced. We worked on fundamentals, we ran some drills, and we had a couple of set plays to learn. To be honest, I hated these practices at the beginning. I just thought playing basketball meant showing up, running around for a while, and having fun. I hadn't been critiqued by a coach for how I played or shot or anything like that before. I tried to give up a couple of times, but thankfully I had awesome parents who helped me get through it and stick to it.
In 5th grade, I was lucky enough to have something happen to me that forever changed my game in a good way... I broke my left wrist. I was in a cast for 2 weeks, and could have easily not gone to practice or games. Again, I was lucky to have a coach who instilled a team mentality and great parents who bought into it as well. While the team practiced, I went to the empty hoop and took shots with one hand. This taught me the proper form for successful, accurate shooting. It was hard. I missed a lot of shots. I dropped many balls, or had them fall off the side of my hand. In time, I was able to handle the ball well enough to shoot with little problems. The next practice after my cast came off was incredible. My left hand instinctively knew where to go to support the ball while still maintaining the correct form. I was now a more consistent shooter, and had the ball control and positioning that I previously lacked.
Being so tall at a young age, I was put with the older team. A team of kids a year older than me in school. This was scary for me. All these "bigger", stronger kids were intimidating to me as I first took the court against them. I had butterflies before every game wondering if there was going to be a big kid who would kill me on the other team. Looking back, this was not just for the sake of kids my own age, and for fairness. It was actually because my coach saw potential in me, and wanted me to be stretched out of my comfort zone and to improve. Did I have bad games? Most definitely. Was I scared many times? Of course! Did I get better? Quite. I played for this great coach all the way up to 8th grade. After I finished my 8th grade season, I was told that if I wanted to continue playing, I would need to try out for the high school team. My coach had done all the mentoring he could, and put it on us to take our game to the next level. I was saddened by this a bit, but really looked forward to trying out as well.
9th grade came. I heard about the tryouts for the sophomore team at the high school, and got those butterflies all over again. I was nervous because it was an unknown place. I didn't know the coaches, and many of the kids I played with weren't going to try out. I did have the confidence that I would play well because I had been playing a year up my whole life, so I had played against many of these older guys before, and by this time, I was much more comfortable matching up against them.
As I arrived for tryouts, I was excited, nervous, and a little scared. Here I was in this huge gym with hundreds of other kids who all had the hope of grabbing one of the coveted 15 spots on the team. The first two days were great. With so many people, they just had us play pickup games and sifted out the kids who had no place on the court. So, as a freshman, I made it through the first two rounds of cuts. As the herd was thinned, we did more skill drills and still played a lot of games. I was bumped around a few different teams to see how I did with different combinations of guys. I made the cut again. The next day I rolled my ankle. It was hurt so bad that I couldn't play. "There went my chances of making the team," I thought. Luckily the coaching staff saw something in me and let me stick around. "We'll keep him around for another day and see how he does," was a line my dad heard a few times in a row. Looking back, it reminds me of the line form the movie "The Princess Bride" that says, "good work, I'll most likely kill you in the morning." This is where I started to get some sideways looks from some of the older kids. I was still playing well, but many of them didn't like the fact that they were getting cut while this "little" freshman was going on. I grew to love, but hate, looking on the coaches office window at the list every day. I loved seeing my name, but hated seeing other kids cry, hit lockers, swear, and give me dirty looks after seeing that they were cut.
The day came for final cuts. The list was posted, and my name was on the list. I had made the team! I had struggled through the second week with a swollen and sore ankle, but still did enough to lock up a spot on the team. I was so excited! This excitement was two fold. One one hand, I was glad to be on a team, to have good coaches, and to face a new challenge. On the second; I was looking forward to whatever popularity may follow making the high school basketball team as a freshman.
I have to confess, I hated middle school. That awkward time of change, of struggling to find out who I was, and who my true friends were. Being so tall and lanky, I was teased and teased and teased. Girls seemed to hate me. There were mornings that I would wake up and just start crying because I dreaded facing people at school. Nothing ever became confrontational or physical, it was just a constant mental beating. So when I say that I looked forward to popularity, I really looked forward to it getting people to look at me in a different light. I wanted it so badly, as many young people do.
I'm going on and on, so this is now going to become a two part entry. So stay tuned and I'll have more on my basketball journey in the next couple of days.
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