by Michael Mayes

Created on: November 22, 2008

I lost a basketball game today. No, not the team I coach. Neither was it a recreation or church league team with which I was playing. Nope, it was a one on one game. No lousy teammates to blame and no inept officials. Depressingly, there is simply no one to blame but myself. What is the big deal you may be asking? I lost to an 8th grader. Granted, he is a very gifted 8th grader but he is an 8th grader nonetheless. To understand why I'm so upset you will have to travel back with me quite a few years.

Competitive basketball has been part of my life since I was in 3rd grade. I started playing for a YMCA team and never looked back. I wasn't particularly good that first year. I was tall and thin (ok, skinny and weak) and wasn't exactly a scoring machine. My feet were big and didn't seem to be proportional to the rest of my toothpick body. Try to imagine Shelley Duvall in clown shoes loping down the court and you get the general idea as to my appearance. I got better though. In 4th grade I made the Little Dribbler's All-Star Team. I still didn't score a lot but I had started to get some fundamentals like boxing out and using the backboard down. Our little All-Star team traveled to Livingston, Texas for a tournament one weekend. We played two games and, to be honest, I don't remember if we won one of them or not. I do remember getting a nice hand from the crowd when I was taken out of the contest late in the fourth quarter of our second game. I hadn't scored much but had played pretty well defensively and grabbed quite a few rebounds. I remember thinking it was pretty cool that those folks were clapping for me.

My first two years in junior high I played behind a big fat guy named Joey. He wasn't very good but was tall and strong. I remember thinking I should be playing in front of that tub of goo. My coach didn't see it that way, however. My game was sound and my skills probably were better than Joey's. However, I was not an aggressive player and didn't have a lot of confidence in myself. So, I lived the life of a second stringer for the mighty Bullpups my 7th and 8th grade year. Something changed my freshman year. I matured a good bit physically but it was more than that. Suddenly, I began to understand the game. I could anticipate when someone was going to break open or where a rebound was likely to carom after it hit the rim. The game slowed down for me. Big fat Joey would never play in front of me again.

As a sophomore I led our J.V. team in scoring and really started

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