The Moment I fell to the floor I thought my entire basketball career was over. As tears rolled down my face the crowd went silent in shock that something might seriously be wrong. “Stand-up,” said my coach in a worried voice, I tried but the pain was unbearable. My mother rushed to the court in shock just as any parent would and helped me off the floor. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking this just could not be right now I have too much to accomplish than just this. See we’re going to take this back to a couple of days before all of this happened to get a better understanding.
December 20th, 2019, started just how any other day would I woke up, showered, brushed my teeth, and got dressed, and left for school. As the day went on, I noticed my ankle hurting more than usual just by walking around. Later that day when I got to practice, I made my coach aware of the pain that was enduring me, and she immediately sent me over to the Athletic Trainers. While in the training room the Trainers brought it to my attention that I have a knot underneath my bone on the side of my foot that’s in an abnormal spot. They figured that if I just stayed off it for a couple of days that it would be fine, and they would keep a close eye on it. I thought nothing of it and continued with my regular activities such as playing basketball and softball, looking back that was one of the worst decisions I've made. I should have just taken the time and let it heal properly, but my drive and dedication for the extracurricular activities I participated in wouldn’t let me.  When being an athlete and having a passion for the sport you play it's hard to let that go and sit down instead of fighting through the pain endured.
 
As time and days went by, there was no improvement in my ankle, but I still decided to push through the pain. My mind was racing all weekend because of the slightest chance of me not playing in districts that upcoming Tuesday wasn’t something I planned on doing or even thinking about. Monday was coming up and I knew I had to do something to prove to my coach that I wasn’t hurt anymore because playing in the game on Tuesday was by far the most important game to me in my life. Every night I did something called “RICE PRINCIPLE” that I learned from the internet. RICE is a treatment that could be used to help swelling and pain in any area of the body. The basic Treatments are Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation, an old-school trick is what I would call it. In addition to the “RICE PRINCIPLE” resting included not moving it for at least 2 hours at a time, Ice for 20 minutes for how every many times you wanted to, Compress to help reduce the swelling and Elevate at least 10 inches. After doing that for some time I started to see the change in the swelling, so I figured I was fine to play. My coach made us practice over the weekend and during that time I took it lightly just being cautious. I started to get a little nervous because a lot of college coaches would be at the game to watch and my whole family would be there too, not to mention we were going to be on TV.
 
The day came Monday, December 23rd, 2019, when I got to school everything was different. As I walked through the hallways, I saw posters with everyone on the basketball team's name on it. The cheerleaders along with the teachers lined up in the hallway to cheer us on as we made our way to the locker room. The stands were full of people I didn’t know, that’s when the nervousness started. I went into the locker room to put on my uniform and shoes and stared in the mirror for a while just to reassure myself that tonight's going to be great. Waiting for the other team to get there I put on headphones to listen to music so I can stay focused and get hype. I walked over to the trainer's room to get my ankle taped, and then came back to stretch. Time passed and was getting ready for tip-off as we walked on the court the crowd chanted “Let's go Wildcats Let’s Go” repeatedly, at that moment I knew it was game time. The referee threw the ball in the air for us to jump the ball and my team won it. In the first couple of minutes of the game the score was tied at 10. 
My team finally went on a scoring streak and the score went up to 24 to 10 which made the other team call a timeout. While in the timeout I noticed my ankle feeling a little funny, but still, I didn’t say anything. When the timeout was over the other team had possession of the ball and scored so now the score is 24 to 12. My team got the ball back and my teammate passed me the ball it was my time to score from the particular play we ran. When I got the ball, I went in for a layup and when I came down, I landed on someone's foot, which made my ankle turn in a very painful way. My body was in shock from all the pain I was feeling. The crowd went silent in shock that something serious might be wrong. All I could hear was my coach saying “Stand up” in what seemed like a worried voice. My mother rushed to the court in shock and helped me up. Tears rolling down my face because I didn’t want this to happen, everything that I have waited and practiced for is over just that quick.
 What I learned from this situation is that I should've just let my injury heal the proper way instead of just rushing it because I wanted to do something that my body wasn’t healthy enough to do. I went through the whole process of going to Physical Therapy because as it turned out I had weak ligaments and tendons in both of my ankles that prevented me from doing the things I was trying to do on the court. A big life changer for me was to humble myself enough to know when it's okay to stop doing something that I love to do when my body tells me not, because I never want to go through that again. Even though I didn’t play how I wanted to in that game I still had other years so come. I had to prove to myself that when I have an minor setback what comes right after it is an major come back. A couple years later I earned myself multiple scholarships to play at different school which included Daytona State and now my life has an different chapter for me, With me pursuing my basketball career there.