Basketball

Basketball was always a sport I've seen others play and sometimes watched on television yet never learned to play properly myself. I am a person who likes and plays almost every sport, and so when Basketball was the next sport on the activities calendar, and some friends urged me to join, I took the opportunity to learn the sport. My major goals with this weren't anything grand like winning tournaments, even though that is certainly something I strove towards, but rather just to learn the sport to a level where I could play with the others and be useful on the field instead of a burden.

My first experiences in practice were both humbling and motivational. I realized how complex the sport can be and how much practice would be required to master it, and yet I could see how my experience from other sports could help me here.

As practices continued three times a week, I saw my skills imroving, even if only marginally compared to that of some teammates. Nevertheless, I could now be more than just a burden on the pitch and so I felt the sport growing on me more and more. My illusions of how much my skills grew were then completely shattered with the first match of the season. It was a friendly game against another school, which we played infront of our school. As I watched this game between genuinly good players, I realized that I would be hopelessly outmatched, and there was absolutely nothing I could have done on the field. It must have been one of the very few moments I was happy that I was on the bench instead of playing, since that would have undoubtedly meant embaressment in front of the whole school.

The next major event on the calendar was the trip to Tirana, Albania. Some time has now passed since our friendly game, but I still wasn't sure if I could be of any use to the team. Despite these reservations I decided to join the trip to Albania, hoping only for a good experience. Indeed, the trip to Albania came to be that and much more. Either our team now had much more practice, or the opponents were simply not as tough, but I felt like I could play without being the worst player on the field. I got to play quite a lot, and we ended up winning that tournament without much struggle.

By the end of the season we had our last trip and tournament, which went to Salzburg. As I was feeling much better about myself, I had no doubts about going. While I don't regret that for a second, the experience was somewhat different from that in Albania. Many of our top players could not attend because of injuries or entrance exams, and so I would now have to play against the strongest teams as well, where I would previously only play somewhat weaker teams. This turned out to be somewhat of a challlange as I was still nowhere near the level of some teammates, but I never felt like I was a burden either. We ended up losing to the team that would win the whole tournament, and while I don't think it was my fault by any means, I am sure we would have won if some of the missing players weren't missing.

Overall, learning a new sport is always an exciting journey, and seeing the improvement in yourself is incredibly rewarding, yet I cannot fully assess the extent to which I have achieved my goal. I definitely got very far in terms of improvement, but I didn't realize just how much further I would have to go to keep up with my teammates. If anything, I could only play to help the better players on my team, instead of playing myself, which can be useful but doesnt showcase much skill at all.