The clock winds down faster than ever. The tenths of a second counting down on the scoreboard makes it appear even faster. The game is tied. My team has the ball. Fresh out of a full timeout, we’re ready to set up our play for the game winning shot. The fans are louder than ever; the cheerleaders scream their cheers, and nobody can hear himself think. We inbound the ball and set up our play. I come off a screen at the top, get trapped into a double team, but I don’t panic. I know that since there are two guys guarding me, there’s one of my teammates open. I find him in the corner and give him a swift pass, like a bullet, right to his hands. One second is left. He shoots!
Those are the moments I live for. Even way before I had learned how to walk, I had already learned how to shoot a basketball. My parents bought me a white and red Fisher Price basketball hoop with a small, feather-stuffed, basketball before I turned one year old. I sat on the floor of our living room each day, and my babysitter watched me as I threw the basketball at the hoop, not knowing the correct way to actually shoot it. Growing up, I went through the basketball stages every young baller had to go through.

It started off with watching my sister play her games at the area YMCA, and I yearned to be out there playing. My mom said that the officials had to stop one of her games because I ran out onto the court and tried to grab the ball, while they were playing. Soon enough, though, my turn came around to play at the YMCA. I was always that kid who never wanted to pass; I just wanted to shoot every time I had the ball.
On the way to each game, Dad always told me, “Brayton, make sure you try to pass the ball around to your other teammates that don’t get to shoot as much.”

Feeling insulted, I replied, “No, they can’t shoot, and then we’ll lose!”

After YMCA ball, I moved on to fifth and sixth grade tournaments with the kids at my school. Junior high basketball followed after that, and those days were my least favorite. I felt ready to get out of middle school and go to high school athletics where the competition exceeded my past experiences.

When winter came around of my freshman year, I didn’t know what to expect when basketball season was upon us. I didn’t know if I would be on the freshmen team, junior varsity team, or varsity team, so I worked hard to make the best team. During a practice a few days before the season started, Coach said that I was to practice with the varsity team. I immediately felt like I had just conquered Narnia. Since Coach made that announcement, I assumed I would be playing on the varsity squad on game day, and I guessed correctly. At first, I felt really nervous because I would be playing against kids three years older than I. However, at the same time, I was ready to accept the challenge.
Now here I sit writing this my junior year, and I still know that I enjoyed freshman year of basketball over any other year, despite the bad record. I remember exactly how I felt playing as a freshman on varsity. The gym we played in was one of the smallest in the area, and I loved it. With everyone cramped inside the small gym, its atmosphere compared to no other: the band playing in their corner of the bleachers, the student sections shouting for their teams, and parents screaming at the officials and coaches.

Almost every school we played against, the coach would tell his team that I wasn’t very good because I was just a ninth grader. Proving them wrong made me feel on top of the world. As the season went on, I grew as a player, and I became more relaxed in pressured situations. In fact, in a close game with minimal time left, I wanted to have the ball. That’s something I acted out in my basement and driveway when I was a kid: the time winding down, the ball is in my hands, and my team needed a game-winning shot. “Five seconds remaining, Martin has the ball. He dribbles to the left wing and makes a move on his defender. There’s one second left, he shoots, and he scores! He scores! Pilots win! Pilots win!”

My childhood to teenage years consisted of polishing my skills through the basketball ranks. After I graduated from shooting the small, fluffy basketball into the Fisher-Price hoop, I spent my elementary days shooting in the Pop-a-Shot, bought by my dad, in my basement with the generic, small, orange basketballs. As a middle-schooler, I sported the red, white, and blue Harlem Globetrotters regulation basketball out in my driveway on the normal-sized hoop that my grandpa helped install. Now, I find myself walking towards the gym every day after school to attend basketball practice, my favorite part of the day, to prepare for game night when the sounds of squeaky shoes, repetitive whistles and swish of a net help transform me into a basketball star.