As I walked into the gymnasium of Westchester High School, I saw a display with many championship trophies in it that were awarded to the schools’ basketball program. It was the first time I witnessed a trophy case filled with city and state titles. To further note their superiority in athletics, Westchester High also had banners hanging from their ceiling for every championship they had won. Coming from a school that had not won a title in over 30 years made me want to hold a trophy that had “Locke High School” printed on it with the words “C.I.F. Division 1 State Champions” right next to it. However, I wasn’t there to just look at their banners and give them their props* for winning those championships; I was there to play my first varsity high-school basketball game as a ninth-grader. Not only was this my first varsity game, but it was also my first varsity playoff game.
Walking into the visitors’ locker room was no quiet task as we heard the negative comments that were being yelled out by the fans. Once inside the locker room, my team started taking guesses at the number of points that we were going to be outscored by when the clock reached 0.0 seconds
The coaches decided to see what I had to offer to the team when they substituted me for the starting forward in the final three minutes of the first half. Acknowledging that I was fully prepared for this game, I took all of the shots that I felt I could make. The first two shots I attempted were successful and ignited a rally before the halftime buzzer sounded.
The magical moment of the night for me came during the last seconds of the second half where my team was down by two points. I was surprised that the coaches trusted me enough to put me in a game-ending situation. I was in the game to serve as a decoy for my team, but when no one was open the ball came to me and I took the final shot. The ball went in-and-out and cost us the upset victory over Westchester.
and the game would be over. As soon as the coaches started hearing the negative comments from their own players, they immediately put a stop to it. They knew that we (the last seed of 16 teams) could easily lose the basketball game to the # 1 ranked team in the city, yet they reminded us about the time and hard work that we had spent on our skills that had enabled us to get to the playoffs.
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