On one Saturday morning I had a basketball game. I was so eager to play because it was my first game ever and didn’t know what really was going to happen. It was a cold fall of 2001. I was still cold because all I had on was shorts and a tee. I walked through the doors and remember seeing a whole bunch wearing the same thing as me. We were warming up, and as I was warming up I was feeling a nervous feeling because I wasn’t making any baskets in the warm-ups.
The game had started and I was on the bench. As the game went on I noticed I was benched until the 4th. All of a sudden I got called into the game. I had a really nervous feeling about going into the game. I had a feeling that I was going to do something wrong I just couldn’t find out what it was. I thought about the plays that we were going over and forgot them. That made everything else worse at the time so my mind was going in circles.
The game started from the time out and the other team got the ball while I was defending. I stole the ball heading down the court then stopped because a defender was on me. Then I passed the ball got it right back and ran down to the other end of the court. I had scored for the other team. As I was running all I could hear was people yelling. At the time I could only think that they were cheering for me because I had no clue I was scoring for the other team. Really the audience was yelling NO! NO! It was the most embarrassing moment of my life but at the end I still scored even though no one was guarding me. After the game I got comment after comment from people on my team saying “Nice shot even though it was for the other team” some of those comments I took as them making fun of me, and some of those comments I took as them being serious about the nice shot. I felt like I had messed up big time.
The next game the coach decided to start me even though I made the wrong basket. I was excited. I kept telling myself over and over again I would not mess up this time. I got the ball and did the same exact thing! I just was way even more embarrassed. I took myself out of the game. I was disappointed and was only thinking I need to practice that much more, so I did. Every day I would practice after school for the following season so I wouldn’t do that. I was just thinking that maybe if I had more experience in the game of basketball then I would know the basic concepts. So I started getting into more and more basketball tournaments.
I stopped going and scoring for the other team. I think everybody has their time of embarrassment and don’t think anyone should be ashamed of it either. We human beings have to be embarrassed first in order to learn from our embarrassment. Next time I’m going to listen to the audience if I can. This embarrassing moment helped me realize that I needed practice. That’s why this story is so important to me. It helped me learn from my mistakes.