Ah, the memories

A lot of my friends that are still in high school and play wheelchair basketball just had the wonderful experience of nationals. This year, it was held in Denver, CO with juniors (varsity, jv, and prep), women's, DIII, and the championship league. Let's just say there were a ton of people there! It kind of made me sad because this tournament is the highlight of pretty much any basketball player here in the U.S. You play hard all year, get a bid to nationals, and you just play. Usually, this is one of the few times that you can see all of your friends from different teams all at one time. The wheelchair basketball community is relatively small and very spread out among all the states. Many memories, relationships, and points are made during this epic weekend. I remember the first nationals that I went to (which was quite some time ago lol). It was held in San Jose, CA and I turned 12 while I was there. It was actually very frightening because all the kids were wayyyy bigger than me and had known each other for a long time. One of the best memories was when we were all just hanging out in the hotel lobby when this single amputee came up to me and asked if he could pick me up. I said um no (stranger danger of course). Well, he picked me up anyway, and I suddenly got very tall. I remember he introduced himself as Brian, and then proceeded to put me back down on the ground. Fast forward to now. Brian Bell, the single amp that picked me up, is a U.S. Paralympian and has played for Lakeshore, the University of Illinois, and finally the U.S. How crazy is that?!?! I think it's pretty cool because he is a beast when it comes to basketball. Well anyways, my last nationals as a senior in high school didn't quite go as well as I had wanted it to. I went with both my juniors team and my women's team. With my juniors team, we won the first game fairly easily. My women's team did not do well at all. We ended up playing in the last place game (which is ok). I ended up scoring 14 points (a career high by the way.) I was pretty proud of myself because of the new career high in scoring and because I had ended my time with them on a good note. With the juniors, however, there is not a happy ending. We played Houston, and if we had won that game, we would play for 5th/6th place (which I would have been pretty happy about). When I got to the game (I had missed some of the warm up because I was with the women), I found out that one of our bigger, better players was going to be leaving at halftime to play with his men's team. Now, as a player who played for 2 teams, I can understand being torn about which team to play for. It is an unwritten rule that if it comes between playing juniors and adult, you play juniors because you only get a certain amount of years on that team. You can play with the adults until you drop dead. Well, he left and we couldn't scrape up the win. Let me tell you, I felt so abandoned by my teammate and I was extremely upset with him. Did our game not even matter to him? Why should I play my hardest if he isn't going to? What made it worse was my coach (who I have never really gotten along with) pulled me aside after the game to try and reason why he let my teammate play with his men's team. I maybe half-listened to this shenanigan filled discussion and left to go watch another game. Because we had lost, we ended up playing for 7th/8th. That game was probably the worst game I have ever played. I didn't even want to show up, but I did for my last game as a high schooler. In the beginning, I was furious with my teammate and showed it by slamming into a few of the opposing players (I managed to get 2 fouls within the first 5 mins. of the game). At that point, I only played half-heartedly. I just wanted it to end. As the last buzzer sounded, I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. You might be thinking, Aw she was crying because it was her last game, and she was gonna miss her team. Wrong. I almost cried tears of joy because I was finally done with having to deal with all the drama and whatnot from the team. I had not been treated very well at all during the 2 years that I played, and I was dang happy to be rid of it all. The team had one last thing to do: silly string the seniors. I honestly have no idea where this tradition came from, but if you're a senior, you're totally screwed. The entire team is given silly string and they all basically ambush you right outside the gym. Me and my best best friend had smuggled some of the silly string cans from the stockpile (don't ever let the parent of one of the kids getting stringed buy the weaponry: we WILL steal it). As we approached the ambush, we uncapped our own weapons and pushed outside, catching everybody off guard (nobody knew that we were going to retaliate.) Even though we did pretty awful, I still felt accomplished (there's no other feeling than the feeling of complete power when holding a can of silly string). Again, no other feeling than spraying some people that were awful to you with some silly string. The moral of the story? Don't give crippled people silly string. Or any other weaponry. We WILL take over the world. Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Peace out yo.