My Freshman year basketball season was a disappointment. I had to play both freshman and junior varsity for the school. The freshman team did better, but the story is about my junior varsity team, how my teammates and coach impacted my life. The team was composed of mostly sophomores, some juniors and then there was me, the little and inexperienced freshman.

In the beginning of the season, we had never played together, our team chemistry was low. The story begins three games into the season. The first two games had been brutal. We lost the first one by 30 points to Rancho Bernardo High School and the second one by 50 points to St. Augustine High School. We were playing our third game and it looked like the other two games. At halftime we were down by 25, we go into the locker and our coach starts screaming at us. After he was done, he left the locker room very angry. We sat down in total silence, waiting for someone to say a word. One of my teammates started laughing and one of the juniors stood up and screamed at him “you think this is funny? i just got back from vacation and i found out you guys lost by 30 and 50 points. coach is not letting me play and i’m dying to play. i’m dying to play!” After that he walked out of the locker room really angry. We finished the game. We lost by 50 again, this time against Santa Fe Christian High School. We were not happy.

The next monday we had to meet in the gym for practice at 5 PM. I remember this really well because when i walked in, my teammate that gave the speech was already there practicing with our coach. I quickly put on my shoes and joined them. As my other teammates arrived, they quickly joined practice. Practice definitely was not the same, it was much more fast paced and a lot of running was involved. Our coach was harder than usual on us. At the end of practice, he gave us a speech saying the we would work three times harder and if things kept going the way they were, we would practice until we vomit.

By the end of the season, everyone had changed. I don’t remember our record but we were around two wins, thirteen losses. Like I said, it was a tough season and we still had six games to go. Before our final weeks of practice coach told us to put our record on the side, we would start over, zero wins zero losses with six games to go. Practices were different, it was like we really started from zero. We went on to win four of the six games.