My Basketball Career

Basketball is the game I love. It has brought me happiness and disappointment. It has brought me trophies and medals. But most importantly, it has taught me so much through 12 years. 

 Every story has a humble beginning. I got my first little hoop for christmas. I still remember it to this day. It was a red, yellow and blue Little Tikes hoop. As soon as I laid my little eyes on it I was in love. 

After I got done opening presents, I grabbed my little ball with my hoop and started practicing. I took a deep breath and took my shot. It hit off the front of the rim and the ball rolled away. I ran after the ball and picked it up once more. I went over to the hoop to try again. I took another deep breath and let it flicker. As soon as it left my hands, I knew it was perfect and sure enough there it was. Swish! Nothing but nylon! After it sunk through the hoop for two, I turned to my dad with the video camera and said “Daddy I did It!” And that's where my love for the game started. ( By the way, I think I kept that hoop until I was like eight as my “dunking hoop.”

A few short years passed and I was in kindergarten. I signed up for the Rivendell basketball team. Of course there were no real games but we did do some skills and drills and oh boy was I excited. The only significant thing that I remembered was something magnificent that happened. We had a practice and we were doing left handed dribbling and of course no one knew how to. We all tried and tried but couldn't pull it off. Since we were all little, we got discouraged quickly and a lot of people were mad and crying. So the coach stopped that pretty quick but that ate me up so that I couldn't dribble with my left. So that night I had a dream that I was dribbling with my left hand and leaving all my teammates in the dust with my sick moves. The next morning after I woke up, I went down the stairs to see if I could dribble with my left hand and sure enough there I was dribbling with my left hand. I'm not sure how that happened but it sure did. The next two years were the same as kindergarten so I'm going to skip over those, but third grade was huge.

Third grade was the first year I could play games and was I ever ready. I was nervous, of course, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. The first couple games I didn't do much other than get some assists, but my third game or so, I popped off scoring a whopping four points. The rest of the season was the same for me. I was scoring two to four points and I was psyched. However, in the last game of the season I exploded like a volcano. I scored eight points and helped my team beat BMU who was our rival at the time. We had come in second to them at our own tournament and we were heated going into that game. I can't tell you how Important It was to walk away with that victory. That’s a wrap on my third grade year. Now let's move on to fourth grade. 

Fourth grade was when I started realizing some talents and moves that I still use today. For example, the euro step. Fourth grade helped me out tremendously in my eyes. Throughout the season I was averaging around eight points a game. And that's where it stayed. The season itself wasn't extremely important. We had a decent record but our team was nothing special. It was the tournaments that were big for us. The first tournament of the year was the Lyme Tournament but there was one problem. I had the flu. I obviously was not 100% but I was playing basketball one way or the other. The first game was against Bradford and we won handily, but our next game was against Hanover, which was going to be a much harder game for us. It was back and forth for the whole game until their best player made a layup as time expired. We had lost and that meant we were playing Thetford .

    When we got to the game I felt worse than I had the day before but I was going to tough it out. Again, the game was an absolute dog fight. We would score then they would and that's how it went. But with 20 seconds left my coach subbed me out,  and then their point guard took the ball away from us and tied it up with a layup. My coach put me back in with five seconds left and we had the ball on the sideline. The ball got inbounded to our point guard. “Five… four… three…” He passed the ball to me and I saw an opening at the free throw line. I drove. Two… One… I let my shot go over their center who I now know as Hunter Clay. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The ball spinning and twirling through the air. The whole gym held their breath and simultaneously, the ball sunk through the net for two. Thetford 14, Rivendell 16. 

    My fifth grade year was not amazing so I'm not going to talk about that but my sixth grade year I was averaging around 18 points per game but it was nothing amazing because we were blowing teams out by fifty every game. As my seventh grade year comes to a close I have been averaging 15 ppg. Also one of my biggest weaknesses in basketball is my defense and this year I have grown a lot so I'm very thankful for that. 

In conclusion, basketball has taught me so much. A great coach once told me to make my not so good, good, and my good, excellent. And what he said Is what drives me to not overthink my making mistakes and keep evolving my game. I am extremly thankful for my coaches and my mentours they have helped me grow. Basketball has given me a second family. A very large second family. I owe alot to basketball. I look forward to trying to make a furture in this game. This game that I love.