Basketball

Saturday morning has becoming basketball morning for Noah and I. This is his second year signed up in the beginning levels of our local basketball program. He’s always excited to go, and I’m excited to go with him. He’s always enjoyed being active and has been involved in soccer, basketball, and now karate as well. He tells me basketball is his favourite sport though. This came without any real pressure from me but it does make me happy. Growing up I was never involved with sports much. I watched lots of hockey on TV and was into baseball during the early 90’s when the Bluejays were doing really well, but only really played basketball.

Basketball seemed like an unlikely sport for me to play too as when I was growing up I was always the shortest in my class for a long time. Memories also go back to early elementary school where we first started learning basketball in gym class. At first it wasn’t fun because I was terrible. My coordination was way off and I couldn’t even dribble the ball without losing control. I can still recall the frustration of looking around and seeing so much of my class appearing to do so much better. With these things in mind I never ended up trying out for basketball teams or playing in any sort of organized way, but I still played.

At home I turned a section of our yard into my own personal basketball court. It ended up being essentially a piece of plywood with a basketball rim attached. This was somehow connected to a tree in our yard. The lawn in front of it quickly turned into a large dirt patch, or mud depending on the weather. There were tree roots sticking out which made it even harder to dribble than just the packed dirt. Air balls were never any fun as they could roll into the backyard, down the bank, and into the river that was behind our home. It was a race to chase after the ball and catch it before it made it that far.

Our neighbours I’m certain hated me. The sound of a basketball bouncing from early morning to late at night. The sound of it hitting the plywood backboard and shaking against the tree. Though I don’t recall any direct complaints from them, I do remember scoldings from my mother to not be out there so early.

Later on as a teenager I didn’t play much at home anymore. But being out with friends we would often head to the neighbourhood court and play three on three half court games. Not sure how I’m not injured as most of the time I’d play in flat deck shoes, if you can remember them. We would play for hours at a time. In high school when we moved away it didn’t take me a long time to find friends and get us all playing at a near by schools basketball court most of the summers. Looking back it helped me make more friends and kept me busy  so I didn’t get myself into more trouble than I did anyway. It gave me an outlet to let out some of my teenage anger and frustrations.

There was one winter where we didn’t want to stop playing. We ended up making arrangements where a small group of us rented the gym at the town hall one night a week. There were times we ended up getting large groups of people showing up to play with us.

When I first moved and after feeling fairly confident in my skills from playing so much I thought maybe I’d stand a chance to join the high school team. It was a new school, no one knew me, I could break out and be different than the person I was at my last school. First day of try outs I walked into the gym, I didn’t even get my new shoes which were purchased for just this reason. Watching everyone play and run through drills who had obviously been doing it for years showed how little I really knew. Even though I felt comfortable with my skills on the neighbourhood courts, this was a different level and I didn’t fit. I left before even lacing up or talking to anyone.

It excites me now watching Noah play. Having him enjoying it and building the skills and techniques now so that if he does decide to continue on he won’t have the same barrier to entry I did when I finally decided I would give it a try. Who knows maybe he’ll get bored of it in the next while and never want to join his high school or any other team. But he’s having fun now and I want to try to make it something we can do together.

Our yard makes it difficult to find a place to put a net, but if I could find away to have one in our yard when I was a kid, I’m sure I can figure something out now. I can already picture summer time out shooting and practicing together, or looking out my office window and seeing him out there shooting over and over again.