December 10, 2019.
The next two weeks flew by faster than a mere blink of an eye. It hadn't seemed like time was passing any quicker than it had in the past, yet I couldn't understand how a whole week had escaped me. I would wake up as usual, letting Otis out and fixing breakfast and lunch for myself and Liv. Then I'd jog to school (running faster and faster each day) and make it in time for the start of my four second semester classes. I'd be freezing when I got to school—since it was the start of December—but it wasn't too bad since I was moving and the school was warm when I finally made it inside. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would go to math, biology, English, and art. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'd go to health, Spanish, human geography, and gym.
I didn't put as much value in my alone time anymore, and I actually made some good new friendships throughout the past ten days. In art I started hanging out with Harper, who despite being indecipherable at times, was actually pretty cool. I also sat beside the other girl from my art class, Aubrey, in my health class. She was nice, other than the fact that she loved drama too much. She'd talk to me for an hour about a meaninglessly comment some other girl made about her in the hallway that day. In art class, however, she preferred to sit by herself. I couldn't imagine why, other than the fact that she was staying away from Harper for some reason. I never asked either of the girls if that assumption was correct. I knew better than to get in the middle of anything like that. I met Wesley in practice one day, who was one of the best players on the JV team. We talk about basketball strategies with Nathan in our human geography class. He's also in my Spanish class, but he talks to Finn for a majority of that class. Finn is also on the basketball team, but I don't know him that well other than through an introduction from Wesley. I got to know some more people on the team, but I didn't have much time to interact with them in between practice sessions and drills. Jackson seemed like a fairly cool guy, Tucker was a major introvert but he was nice, Xavier looked and acted like the toughest guy around—which he was—but he was super friendly when I got to know him.
In art I continued my painting of a basketball player. I decided to trace the court and the player first before painting after I made a mistake while painting. And unless I wanted the player's face to be a basketball (which Harper found hilarious at my expense), I had to re-do the entire thing. That was a bit of a bummer, but it wasn't like it was an amazing work of art to begin with. Besides, I had the whole year to work on it, so it wasn't exactly at the top of my priority list.What was at the top of my priority list, though, was basketball.
It had been more than two weeks since the first practice, and time was passing faster than I could keep up with it. On the first day of practice, December 17th had seemed so far away, but it was getting closer and closer. In practice, I mostly focused on myself and my own improvement. I pushed myself harder than ever in workouts and drills, and I tried my best to contribute what I could to team scrimmages. I had convinced myself that I would work my way up to being a starter by the first game, but that was looking less and less like a reachable goal. The coach had assigned me the position of shooting guard, which I was a little disappointed about, because my main position had been point guard for the past two years or so. I hadn't played shooting guard since I worked my way to the top of my middle school team. I understood the decision, though. If the point guard wasn't on their A-game, the whole team was at a disadvantage. The coach had assigned the two point guards to be Jackson and Nathan, with Jackson being the JV team captain. The other shooting guards besides me were Finn, who switched back and forth between shooting guard and small forward, and Chance. Small forwards included Cam, Wesley, Amir, and Colton. Power forwards included Max, Zane, Tucker, and Levi. Centers included Xavier and Diego. Most of the players could switch between two positions, so there were at least five players for each role on the court.
A team is only as good as its weakest player—Coach Crenshaw had taught me that. Playing basketball in middle school, I had been more focused on building the team up a whole. I knew I couldn't win by myself, so I helped my teammates get to the place that they needed to be. But it was different this time around. This time, I was the weakest player, or at least that was what it seemed like. Even so, I worked just as hard—if not harder—as everyone else on the team, and I was going to prove to everyone that I could be the best me. Only, it might take longer than I had expected. I couldn't see myself on the starting team next Tuesday, which discouraged me a little. But I was in for the long run. A couple games on the sidelines wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I just had to focus on one practice at a time.
The whistle blew. I took off running down the court, bent down to touch the free throw line and ran back. I touched the baseline, then took off running further down, touched the half-court line and ran back to the baseline. I touched the baseline and ran even further to the opposite free throw line, then—you guessed it—back to the baseline. I bend to touch the baseline, then ran all the way to the opposite baseline, touched it and ran all the way back.
"Hustle, hustle!" yelled the coach as the whole team ran suicide after suicide.
After we were done with suicides, we transitioned into the rapid fire shooting drill. In that drill, the shooter shoots the ball, the rebounder gets the rebound and passes it to the passer, who passes it to the shooter, as fast as possible. After every five shots, we rotate positions.
Then we did pushups, followed by sit-ups, followed by planks, and so forth. Then we all got a ball and practiced our handling skills around a dummy. Then we did a fastbreak drill, then a conditioning drill, then a shooting drill, then a defensive drill. I was already familiar with most of the drills and had ran lots of them in the past. After we finished drills, we'd do some scrimmages with different mash-ups of teams. And then practice was over.
"Sweet Shack?" Cam asked me, the second after practice ended.
"You know it," I told him. "Just let me grab my stuff."
He nodded and walked toward Nathan and Max to extend his invitation. I walked over to my bag and stuffed some loose things back into hit. I felt a hand clap my shoulder and turned around.
"Good practice today," said Jackson. "I can really tell you're improving."
"Thanks, man," I replied. "You'd be improving a lot too, if you were as bad as me."
Jackson just shrugged. "Maybe one day I'll be trying to be as bad as you."
I smirked and he walked off toward the coach. Just as I was turning back around, though, I felt another hand on my shoulder. It was Chance.
"You aren't by the way," he said. "Improving, I mean. Jax only said that because his daddy wanted him to."
I nodded. "Yeah, you might be right. But I'd keep a lookout if I were you, just in case his daddy decides to have me take your place on the team."
Chance's nostrils flared as he glared at me. "That will never happen!"
I just shrugged him off. "I don't know about that. Never's a long time, you know?"
"Then that's a long time of you being on the bench," he said nastily, pushing my shoulder and causing me to take a few steps back. I just turned back to my bag and let him walk away thinking he'd won the "argument". I knew full well how to deal with guys like him—not dealing with them at all. Just let them walk away with what they think they have. It wasn't up to me to get even with him, after all. The universe had a way of doing that all by itself.
"Don't mind him, by the way," said yet another voice from behind me.
I turned to see a pretty Latino girl standing in front of me. I recognized her from around school quite a lot, but she was always surrounded by a group of girls. I was also pretty sure that she was a part of at least half of the clubs at the school.
"I'm Maia," she said, extending her hand out to me. "Maia Hendrix."
"Oh you're the coach's daughter," I said, putting two and two together.
"Yep, that's me."
I realized that I had just been standing there looking at her, and must have come across as extremely rude—or extremely stupid. I shook her hand. "I'm Blake."
"Yeah, I know," she replied. "Blake Manson."
"Why does everybody here know my name?" I complained. "I haven't been able to properly introduce myself to one person!"
She laughed, which made me smile too.
"Well, since I'm the manager of the team, I think I have a good excuse for knowing your name."
I considered this. "Better than most."
She laughed again. "I'll take it."
"Hey, do you—" I started, but I stopped short, noticing her staring at something over my shoulder.
"Oh, sorry," she said. "It's just, I think they're trying to get your attention."
I looked over my shoulder and saw Cam, Nathan, and Max jumping up and waving at me to get over there.
"Oh right," I said, turning back to her. "I said I'd go get some junk food with them, and they take a promise like that to heart."
"I can see that," she smiled. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Blake."
"You too," I replied, and headed toward my friends before I could embarrass myself in some way.
"What were you doing?" Cam asked, making it sound like a crime that I was taking so long.
I walked with Cam, Nathan, and Max out the gym door and felt the cool evening breeze flow against my face.
"I was having a conversation," I replied. "Since you didn't seem to notice that."
"My bad," Cam said, putting his hands up. "I just thought you might want to escape from said conversation."
"Nah, she seemed cool," I said. "And you know that we don't have to go to the Shack after every practice, right?"
"Oh, come on!" Cam protested. "We've been like four times, out of like, ten practices or so."
"Yeah," I replied as we walked down the sidewalk, "and we used to only go after games."
"Yeah, well, we need to catch up on the times that we didn't come over the summer," Cam said.
"Here, here," Nathan said.
"Yeah, I'll drink to that," Max agreed. "A chocolate shake, of course."
We laughed and made our way to Sweet Shack to eat and drink and just hang out. I started to realize that one of the reasons that I loved basketball so much was because of all the time I spent with my teammates. It was also one of the reasons that I missed playing basketball so much. Isolating myself and not being around other people just isn't me. Any situation is always better when there's other people around to experience it with, at least for me. Having other people to share in successes and even failures just makes everything much better. I decided that I would stick by my friends as long as they want to stick by me. That way, whether I achieve my end goal or not, they'll be there with me. And in the end, that's all the really matters anyway.