Reflective Essay: My Basketball Experience

When I first started playing basketball, I was not anything special and was just an average player. During sixth through eighth grade, my mother and father signed me up for recreational basketball. Throughout the season I felt fine playing with people I knew and developed as a player, which gave me a sense of comfortability during sixth through seventh grade. In eighth grade the team that I had played for, and the guys I befriended had either stopped playing basketball or found an interest in new sports. When eighth grade began, my decision became clear that I could tryout for the school team or play another year of recreational basketball. Although the idea of trying out for the school team sounded great, I felt that I did not have enough

When the fateful day finally arrived, I walked confidently into the gym where my tryout was to take place. Inside the gym, I saw a mod of players getting ready to warm up. At first I was disheartened, but i soon realized that everyone was competing for a spot on the team. After what felt like an eternity, tryouts begun. To start of the two hour tryout, the head coach had each player go through intense drills in order to gauge each player’s capabilities. I believe that I completed the drills correctly and to the best of my ability. In my mind, I felt that tryouts was going to become repetitive, with the coach repeating the same sequences. However, about one hour into practice, our coach decided that in order to really see how good each player was he had all of the players from different teams and play multiple scrimmages to finish out the day. In the games, I realized how many players who were better than me were out there in the state. At first I could not keep up, but I eventually became somewhat comfortable in the way I was playing. At the end of tryouts, the coach announced that an email would be sent to the parents regarding who made the team and who did