Me

Hobby: Effect Essay
Everyone has their own hobby of choice, for me it is and will always be basketball. I still play whenever I get a chance, and I am steadily meeting new people that share my love for the game. Growing up my love for the game definitely faded in and out, with the turn of the seasons. I was always a three sport kid, soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring, this led to some busy times for my parents. Once I got to high school things were much different for team sports. First of all you had to have money in order to play, and your parents had to be active with the school and with hassling the coaching staff to make sure their kid got to see some minutes. It was never about talent at my high school, it was all about politics. Since I didn't get to play basketball for my high school, I played at the local YMCA, where I met many new people in the area, and I was able to step away from sanctioned basketball, and start to play for myself.

Playing at the local YMCA was much different than playing for any school team. Whether it was the Y-Spring League of 2006, or just shooting around in an empty gym. It was at this point in time when I started to develop my feel for the game. I was so frustrated with my parents splitting up, with not being able to play basketball with my friends anymore, and I was starting to question my own abilities on the court, which are plentiful. My frustration off the court started to pass with the wind everyday that I kept going back to the YMCA on Hammond Street in Bangor. Some days we would play pick-up games, and I would meet 15 different people in one day, other days I would shoot around with just my father, these were the times when he grilled me about my jump shot. I look back on my families disadvantages in the environment that we grew up in, together, and I am starting to see them for what they were, which was not a disadvantage at all, but more of individuality.

Since the majority of my friends that I grew up with were playing basketball for the high school, I ventured out to make new friends, with basketball as my conversation maker, I would go down to one of the local outdoor courts whenever the weather would allow outdoor sport to go on. There usually was a few guys playing, they took one look at the skinny white boy and did not take me seriously. This has changed now that I am 6'1”, and I have a beard, but in high school nobody gave me a shot in hell to compete, and that is exactly what I did, compete. With the combination of my drive, my energy, and my skill, along with my brotherhood mentality, people at the local courts quickly began to recognize my status on the basketball court.

Many times I would specifically go to the courts to get away from life, and the stress that comes with it. Basketball was my tool to relieve stress, when I had nowhere else to go, I would take my anger, frustration, and hate out on the basketball court. I would always leave the court in a much more positive mood than when I arrived. Basketball was my vent I could scream and yell in the game, and it didn't matter because that's what people do when they're mid sport and they get frustrated. Not having to hold anything in while I was on the court was always very refreshing, but this caused for many bad run ins on the court as well. Since I would get out on the court looking like the angriest kid in the world, it caused a lot of other people that came out there for their own reasons to become frustrated with me. There is a very simple solution to this problem, sense the people that had problems with the way I was playing on any given day, seek them out after the game and just let them know, “Hey man I am sorry, things got a little out of hand today, let's keep it all on the court.” This statement will put me at peace of mind, and hopefully any person that I offended, because in essence it is competition and we all want to win. Basketball teaches me a lesson everyday on the court, none more valuable than this, if I focus my mind away from the problem that's at hand, many times a solution will present itself, basketball is my best friend, my swiss army knife, and my hobby.

Since I didn't get to play basketball for my high school, I made many new friends, hung out in a new city everyday, learning it from the inside out, and I started playing basketball for me, noone else. Some would look back at missing out on high school sports as a negative aspect of life, since I love sports so much, I can not entirely disagree with them. I look back at the experiences that I missed in high school, of becoming a team, winning and losing together, these are all valuable lessons, but what is more valuable of a lesson than feeling rejected because people think they are better than you? Because you may not have a thick wallet, or your last name is just not the right amount of syllables. I did not break as a person, I bent, and all of these lessons have made me stronger and more flexible with each passing day. Not to mention, spending a lot of time at the court by myself, focusing on my game, and my game alone, this made my skill, and talent levels jump through the clouds, because nothing is better for the game, than some good old fashioned hard work.