Letting Go

I’ll never forget the decision I was recently faced with. I had to choose between the sport that I loved, and a new beginning. After a couple years of playing mediocre HORSE games in the driveway with my dad and sister, I decided I loved basketball enough to play for Sycamore’s youth league. I played for three years before I started travel ball with Sycamore Fury. Although I experienced my first disappointment with the sport in seventh grade, when I was tossed back and forth between the A and B teams, I thought nothing could ever douse the passion in my soul for the game of basketball. Freshman year was my best year yet. I went from dominating eighth grade B team games to the starting lineup of the A team. Sophomore year was good too, as I held my position as starting center.

                During summer league before junior year, I, to my surprise, received tons of playing time. I didn’t think I wouldn’t play at all, but I had certainly anticipated a drop in playing time, considering I was now playing at the varsity level. But I received a real smack in the face when the actual season came. In the first game, I didn’t leave the bench until there was three minutes left, and we were winning by almost thirty points. The next game, I racked up a whopping minute and thirty four seconds of playing time. And the next game? I never even played. I knew I was no superstar at the game of basketball, but I also knew I didn’t deserve to be treated like the Brian Scalabrine of the Sycamore Girl’s Varsity Team.

                I think I had made my mind up about not playing the next year as I sat glued to the bench at the Convo Center for the much anticipated DeKalb Sycamore double header. And if that wasn’t enough to convince me, the stat sheet I received at the end of the season, stating that I had only played in twelve of the twenty-nine games certainly was. There were so many people I was afraid of letting down. Basketball was all my dad and I ever talked about. How could I just stop playing? After a full blown yelling match with him when I was upset about receiving no playing time for one of the few games he was able to see, he gave me the best advice anyone could have. “You have to understand it’s just a game, and there are more important things in life.”

                I began to think of all the things basketball was keeping me from accomplishing. I could use my recently freed time to do the important things. So I decided to do what was best for me. I cut loose my ties to the coach I had grown to hate, and the game that meant the world to me. I believe in letting go of what no longer serves you, in hope of starting over again.