High School Basketball Narrative

I remember it like it was yesterday, well if you wanted to be technical you could say I remembered the whole last week, considering this was nearly the seventh time it had happened. I remember falling to my knees with my head against the fabric of my bed sheets while balling my weary eyes up into huge puddles of tears buried in my pillow, asking myself why didn't they pick me ? "why aren't I good enough ?!". Making the school Basketball team is something that was a very huge goal for me at the start of every school year, and a motive at the start of every summer.Till this day I haven't made neither my middle school nor high school Basketball team, I've only came very close. My freshman year of high school is where it hurt the most. I had finally started to get a
wonderful feel for the game and I had worked hard on all my fundamentals the whole summer constantly, as opposed to in middle school where I was only playing lazy pick up games with my friends outside day by day.The school year went by and I noticed my improvement and so did others. I start to pick up a lot of attention from my game, I recall one incident in gym class when my teacher Coach Cason pulled me to the side to give me praise and talk to me about trying out for the Junior Varsity Basketball Team.
At this moment I've gotten my hopes up and I'm almost certain that I'm going to make the team. When the day of tryouts come, November 4rth, 2012, my alarm goes off and I wake up, get myself situated, say a prayer, grab my favorite sneakers (which at the time was the Under Armour Black Ice : Brandon Jennings Milwaukee Bucks Home Red Strap Colorway), tie them to my backpack, grab a bowl of frosted flakes and sling my backpack onto my scrawny shoulders and hop into my older brothers car so that he could drop me off at school. I’m a little nervous once I’ve finished my school day once the bell rings and the announcements go off saying in a big hefty voice “ALL BOYS PARTICIPATING IN BASKETBALL TRYOUTS PLEASE REPORT TO THE MAIN GYM NO LATER THAN TWO O’FIVE”. I sprint down the hallway and make sure I’m the first one in the gym. After a good two hours of running, doing drills I’ve done before and Scrimmaging I feel exhausted but none the less confident and satisfied with my
preformance. The next morning there’s a big crowd of guys buy the gym door conversing about who’s name is on the list, who made the team. I confidently bombard through the pile of boys and say “EXCUSE ME FELLAS’’ and run my finger across the paper looking for my name only to find that it wasn’t there. My jaw drops in awe and my facial expression starts to change from enthusiastic to despair, I continue to re run my finger up and down the page but still nothing. Instantly my heart drops and I start to go into a big state of depression. I come home to my family only to find out both of my younger brothers made their middle school teams, which only made me feel worse. Yes, that's right, here we are, right back where we began. There’s little ole me In the corner of my room hinged over my bed, crying. After a few days of being down in the dumps I realized that there’s always next year so I just told myself work harder, you’ll get it next year, Until it happened again the next year, and the next year, and the next year. Although Basketball is a really big part of my life, It’s obvious It isn’t something I’m not really accomplished it.The fact that I’ve constantly tried and tried and have constantly failed has built my hunger, my drive, my will and my perseverance to succeed. Over time I picked up a few tips, one that really stuck with me was given to me by my older cousin Bronson Vuninka. Bronson told me “In order to succeed you must fail’. This quote was significant to me because once I gave it some thought I realized that nobody in the history of mankind has succeeded at everything or has been given everything they’ve wanted or asked for, It’s about hard work. Failure has built me into a strong hard working young man today, whether it is with my family, or my religion, as one could say I am very strong in my faith, or whether it is with my school studies and my physical health. The fear of failing taught me how to adjust to the real world, how to accept the fact that not everyone will accomplish some things the first time and has pushed me both spiritually and mentally in order to strengthen my mind and allow me to give my all & absolutely best at everything I’ve committed to do.