I began playing sports from little on. They defined me as a child, and still define me as a person to this day. Playing year round sports turned me into a very well rounded athlete. I was beginning to feel as if sports were innately a part of me. Sports are something I could not live without. There is something about playing and watching them that thrills me. Every minute of every day of my childhood I spent thinking about the practices or big match ups coming up, for the team I was in season for. I wouldn’t say playing basketball was my life passion, but playing basketball was defiantly an immense passion of mine and nothing could interrupt me from this.
My summers were spent playing AAU basketball. The summer going into freshman year of high school was a big year for me as player. There is one game from all of the games played that summer that stood out in my head, and still stands out to me. It was the day my team played a top competitor. We had a fair chance at beating this team. Preparing for the game I stood weak in the knees, my heart was racing, and I was breathing hard. I couldn’t figure out why I was so nervous, maybe it was anxiousness, or maybe it was suspense, better yet a combination of all three. I had played many basketball teams, against even harder teams then this, why did this game seem different?
I went into the game confident, yet still nervous. Warm-ups didn’t exactly ease my emotions, perhaps they just made me more up tight. Standing in our team huddle my coach told us to remain calm, and to just leave it all out on the court. He told the team the starting line-up, and it came as no shock to me I was going to start, At this point I think all of the emotion I was feeling suddenly left my body, sort of making my body numb, or perhaps it intensified the emotion by a lot. I thought to myself “This is it Tony, this is what you have been practicing and working for.” I started the game strongly. The other team had a player that...