Freshman year of basketball comes around. I'm getting ready since it is my favorite sport, but the week before it starts my mom got covid. I have a two-week delay to the season. I missed tryouts to get onto a better team, I thought I had no chance to make it to JV. In those first two weeks of practice, I missed learning the plays, so I was behind on that too. Once we had the first two games I had most of the plays down very well, which got me more playing time as the season went on. 

After about halfway through the season I thought it was too late for me to get moved up. Coach never really said anything about it to me and I just kept playing for the sport I loved and not to get moved up anymore. The next week my C-squad coach talked to the team about an underclassman getting moved up. After I heard that I thought for sure there would be no shot, I was not good enough to be playing at a higher age level. Before I knew it, the underclassmen was practicing with us, and was running my spot in practice sometimes.

The next week, the varsity head coach came up to me and said, “How would you like to come and play JV? I already talked to your parents about this. They said they think it would be great for you to come to play at a higher level.” I thought to myself no way this is happening. The coach said,  “JV practice is in 30 minutes, you can finish your practice here and I'll be back in about 20 minutes to see if you want to move up.”I finished C-squad practice and went to practice with the JV team.  

  The next two days of practice were hard because we had a game in 2 days. JV has all the different plays I had to learn. My first JV game was ruff, this was a big step in playing level. It took me a couple of games to get used to the higher pace games. Towards the end of the season, I became an average JV player. not the top scorer and ball-handler, but also not the worst. At the end of the regular season, the varsity coach asked the JV team to go with them to the playoffs. Unfortunately, I had the driver's ed schedule right after the C-squad season so I could not go with them. my freshman year of basketball had finally come to an end.

Over this year of basketball, I learned coming into the season late is always going to be hard. The rest of the team already knows the plays and it is my first practice of the year. I had to jump in and catch on as best as I could. Throughout the season, after I got the plays down better, I was not having to stress on what to do with each play. Because it turned into muscle memory. Then we were halfway through the season and I didn’t think there was any hope for me to be pulled up so I made the one mistake and started to give up. One of the biggest things I've learned all season is if you always work hard it will pay off in the end.