A New Game to Me

I had never really grown an interest into sports until 7th grade when I started playing recreational basketball. At this point in my life, I knew little about rules and couldn’t be more inexperienced. I decided to get involved for the fun of it and mainly because I had a number of friends who enjoyed playing both competitively and in their free time. Most game and practices that I went through in my recreational program weren’t very smooth. I had no clue what I was doing most of the time and simply took shots when I was open and passed when I wasn’t. The motivation to continue and hopefully turn basketball into a regular hobby came after two shots I made in the final game of my first recreational season, which were unironically my first actual points I ever had. I had made decisions to continue practicing in my own time the following two years and push myself to my fullest potential. I went out to play casual games with friends when the weather became warmer very often and saw fast improvement, playing at a much higher level the following year at recreation. Since recreation only goes up to 8th grade, my only option was to try out for the freshman team when my first year of high school came. During the summer leading up to it, I attended numerous camps and practiced for hours almost on a daily basis and was able to successfully make the freshman team that year, but I was unfortunately moving schools halfway through the season when my parents made the decision to look for a bigger house in a neighboring town. This caused conflicts with my coach, but I enjoyed the opportunity to play for an actual competitive team. After I settled in to my new home, I never really had the same amount of time to practice playing basketball compared to the past, as I also had commitments to high school football and track and had to adjust to settling in a new environment. After being cut from the school team sophomore year, I decided to only continue playing basketball for fun and not competitively and only followed through playing football and track the rest of high school. I didn’t think much of my decision to stop playing competitive basketball as sports aren’t the most serious thing in the world. After all, some of the games I can get myself into at local parks are almost at the same level of intensity and are more enjoyable. The main point of describing my involvement with basketball through my teenage years is to show that you should never back down from a challenge or interest because you may not be as good as you want to be, as there is always room for improvement. To put this into perspective, I turned a game that I never had interest or skill in playing into an everyday hobby, or at least something that I am always willing to do when given the opportunity.