Sporting memories: Getting cut from the freshman basketball team in a new city

I was very involved in sports as a kid. I have my parents to thank for that because for as far back as I can remember they were encouraging me and my siblings to be involved in as many sports as possible. The amount of support we received from them was pretty astounding when we look back and this was especially true for my sister, who went on to get a college scholarship and play pro basketball as well. At one point we moved near a specific town and she went to a private school at what I presume was great expense, just so that she could attend a school that had an excellent basketball program. It must have worked out because in the 4 years she spent in high school, she went to the state tournaments every year and won them twice.

While basketball definitely wasn't the sport I was best at I did enjoy it and was better than most people at it. However, there are more factors at play in my story aside than just raw talent.

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In my freshman year of high school my family had just moved to a new city and I found myself at a rather enormous high school the likes of which size I had never seen before. I knew no one and high school is stressful enough without introducing this social aspect of it. There are a lot of politics in high school and as a freshman it seems as though you are the target of bullying by older students on a regular basis, particularly if you don't know anyone - which I didn't. I managed to make friends because I like to believe that I am a pretty decent person that is worth knowing, and one of the ways that I made these friends was because of sports.

On the week of basketball tryouts things just didn't go well for me at the one and only year that my family spent living in this part of the world. I ended up catching a stomach virus of some sort and was really drained during the week that the tryouts were going on.

I remember going to the tryouts and still performing better as far as overall skills are concerned but I didn't have the stamina to get moving during the various running drills that we were forced to go through.

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I'm certain that this lack of performance didn't go unnoticed by the coaches, who also didn't know me and it was evident that they did know a lot of the other boys that were trying out for the team. Even though I genuinely was sick and explained to them that I was it might have came across as weakness in their minds. One of the days of the week-long tryout I didn't even attend the tryouts or even attend school. On the days that I was there I was better than many of the other kids as far as shooting, dribbling, and fundamentals are concerned but perhaps I came across as problematic because here we were in the very first week of the basketball season and I didn't even turn up for one of the practices.

When the results were posted and the new teams were declared, I was one of only a handful of people that didn't make the team. Since people didn't really even know who I was yet at this school, it was even more embarrassing not making the team because I heard rumblings about "the new kid" didn't make the team. It was kind of humiliating and didn't do much for my social status even though if given the opportunity to play against the guys who did make the team in 1-on-1 I would have beaten most of them.

Perhaps it was a bit of a blessing that I didn't make the team because I would later be faced with a situation of being so good at the sports I preferred anyway which were football and soccer that I wouldn't have time to play all the sports anyway. That is the way that I try to remember it anyway. Plus, the fact that I am barely 6 feet tall would have eliminated me from contention in the sport for the most part anyway whereas being 6 feet gall and 175lbs is pretty ideal for someone playing soccer.

This doesn't change the fact that I really remember the day that the freshman team was posted in the hallway of the school and how my name was one of just a handful that wasn't on it. You always remember the best and the worst moments in life and as far as sports are concerned this was one of the worst for me.

I ended up getting a bit of clout later on in the school year when they held basketball intermural pick up games and I was a standout performer at these. Not only was I doing well against kids my own age but I also was defeating kids several years older than me and even adults. People would ask me why I was not on the high school team and I just answered that "I was sick during tryout week." This is, after all, quite true.

I would later end up making the team in my 2nd year but never even played a game since at that point I was being pressured by coaches to focus on 1 or 2 sports instead of playing all of them and in the end the coaches were correct. I will always remember that really humbling week though and how it made me feel to be singled out as "not good enough" to play on the team.