Before freshman year of high school,
my dad and mine's goal was to make the freshman basketball team. I had played
basketball all my life, and my dad was very, very passionate about basketball.
To prepare, we would wake up around
6AM to go to the park. Usually it was very foggy. We had a simply routine which
basically involved me shooting the basketball a couple of hundred times where
he would retrieve the ball for me every time. I thought it was easier since I
was doing the fun part, until one hour of consecutive shooting made more arms
flimsy, but he still had the passion to pass me the ball every time, demanding
me to be more accurate.
Sometimes he would yell at me if I
got tired; other times we wouldn't be able to leave until I made ten
consecutive free throws. The pressure and discipline was there, but nothing
compared to what I would face in the future.
When basketball tryouts came out, I
was very nervous. My dad and I had practiced all summer and this was a
do-or-die moment. Like a job interview, I remember the tryouts were separated
three parts. If you passed the first tryout, you advance. If you didn't, you
would be cut and have to tryout next year. There ended up being two teams, a
blue and a red team. Out of the 30 or 40 people who tried out, I ended up
making it until the end - barely.
I was relieved and my dad was happy
for me. My closest friends from middle school who I played basketball with
every day in the morning, lunch, and afternoon ended up not making the team, so
I kind of felt bad, but what I experienced in basketball practice, I look back
and think maybe that got a break.
Basketball practice was something I
had never experienced in my life. I thought basketball was supposed to be
"fun". Instead, it was torturous. Our coaches demanded us to train
like we had never trained before, for hours.
We didn't get to play a lot of
basketball, much of it was drills I had never done before. We would do things
like run around the school, while the last person had to run to the front of
the line so he had to advance his speed quicker than the entire team whom were
already running at a steady, face pace.
There was something called defensive
stance, in which we were ordered to go into a defensive like stance. In this
stance, you put on arm up and one arm down like you are guarding somebody. Your
back posture had to remain straight. Your legs bent at the right angle, and
most importantly, the soles of your feet can never touch the ground. The
coaches would know if you were cheating if they could not slide a piece of
paper halfway under your feet. Remaining in this posture for 10 minutes made
people moan and groan.
We would do something called
ditches, which everybody hated. Basically, it meant the entire team going
literally to a big ditch. We would walk up and down these ditches at a 45
degree angle a hundred times. For people who complained, more were added.
Towards the end, it felt like a never ending experience.
We would also do another drill
called suicides. This was by far the most painful. At the end of a two hour
practice where everybody was tired, in order for us to go home, the coach had
everybody line up across the sideline of the basketball court. It was our job
to run from sideline to sideline 17 times in 60 seconds or under. That means
you have no more than 4 seconds to get from one side to another side, doing
this consecutively for 17 times which coaches monitoring. If you failed, not
only did no one get to go home, but the entire team would have to start over
again.
When we did play, a lot of it was
memorizing plays, nothing compared to the "free play" that I had been
used to. This probably required to most internal pressure of practice mainly
because others were trying to compete for your spot in order to start on the
team. Often times, if you made one mistake, like I did, you would immediately
put on the sidelines by the coach, and replaced by somebody else. You had to be
alert at memorizing and obeying orders at all time.
Although we all thought our team was
well trained during practice, we were not trained when it came to the real
games. The coach was usually angry at us most of the times usually because of
stupid mistakes we would make or our ability to win close games, but then blow
it in the end.
Because I was scrawny at the time,
the coach didn't have a lot of confidence in me so I didn't get to play much. I
was usually the rooter (yes, you know that guy). The times when I did get to
play, it was either really brief or when we knew that the game was ours,
meaning we had won by a lot.
When we lost games however, the
punishment was a long, quiet bus ride home or the coach yelling at us the
entire way home. On top of that, more time in practice was spent which meant
more drills, suicides, push-ups, memorizing plays, you name it.
To sum it up, my dream of what I
thought being on the basketball team would be like, ended up to be hell in my
first year of high school.
However, I did learn two important
lessons from all of it. The first one was every ounce of pain that I went
through made me a stronger person, from weight lifting after practice was over
to boxing a person out and never letting him touch the ball. It was deadly
competitive and I knew the coaches never respected anybody who made excuses. You
either gave it all that you got or go home.
The second lesson is that I had been
a pretty solid shooter up until that point. That was one of the best aspects of
me was that I was skilled at shooting the ball from midrange. That is what
separated me from other players, but I depended on that way too much. There's a
saying basketball that says, "You live by the shot, you die by the
shot."
I relied too much on the shot and
realized that I was focusing too much on myself. No one cared if you knew how
to shoot well, because frankly, it's easy to shoot well when nobody is on you,
but when you have a good defender with long arms, it's nearly impossible.
What's more important is doing a play right and getting a wide open shot, and
that required teamwork - a team identity as one instead of an individual
identity trying to separate himself from the team. When I look back on it,
that's much of what I did. Basketball is a team game; it's never about one
person. That's what wins games and championships.
How does playing basketball affect
my life or somebody's life success? Well what I learned is that after going
through one of the most painful experiences in my life, a lot of everything
else after that never measured up. When joined other sports teams later and
heard people complaining about running one lap around the school, I kid of just
looked at them and said to myself, "Are you kidding me?"
The more pain you can endure from
life, the more experience you get from it. I could of quit the basketball team
at anytime, even when I didn't much playing time and even when it was taking
hours away from my academics, but I didn't want to quit half way through and
not gain the experience from finishing. Winners don't quit. They persevere. I
don't think I would have that time of experience for something else.
Secondly, if you happen to be in an
environment where you're working with people, you must learn to cooperate and
think as a team. How can you help the team even if it's something small? You
have to think in terms of not what is good for, but what is good for the team.
By doing this, you're opening up yourself up to the full picture and making
yourself a leader.
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