Personal Essay

One personal experience that has been special in my life was last year. I was a junior in high school and I was excited for basketball season. It was my first full year on the varsity team and I knew we were going to have a special year. This was one of my most special times in my life because it built new relationships with teammates first of all. It was also special because of hard work we put in every day throughout the season and all the fun that was produced along the way. All of these things put together are what made this so special to me.

The first day of practice was an experience of itself. It was pretty much a completely new team, with the exception of a couple guys from last year. Coming in two hours early to get acquainted with teammates, getting our jerseys, and going over some film from last year was an entirely different feeling from last year on the JV team. But after a few days in practice everyone started being more social and talking to one another. Sure at first not everyone was happy with one another, but we learned how to ignore that negative energy and move past it. It was all about working together and talking to one another so we're not working as individuals, but as a group. People could definitely see when we were being a one or two man team when the same person was taking the same bad shots over and over again in games. It wasn't getting us anywhere because we were a mediocre team. Few fights resulted in practice, and emotion showed on each and everyone's faces during that point. I believe after that, we became more together which led to our sixteen game winning streak.

During the year we had to work for game time every single day. If you didn't work hard in practice, you weren't playing. You had to go all out every single day in the gym, and prove to all the coaches that you deserved to be there. There were times where someone would get hurt and new people had to show up, and I made sure I one of those people would be me. Our coaches are very strict on who they play because they know it could be the difference between a win and a loss. Every year our coach choses about nine people that he thinks will give 100% effort in every game and put in the work to be the best possible. Well when that time came around, it was my time to shine when I had the chance to start during our Christmas tournament. I think it was a great experience to be introduced and represented during that time and I will never forget it.

The best time of last year though would have to be the fun we had in the locker room, during games, and at school. Laughing is probably the best trait anyone can have, especially during a season where you see the same people every day not just at school, but in practice and games. Il admit the first few weeks of last season wasn't very fun when everyone was arguing and fighting, but after that people were laughing and joking almost every day. I can still remember