Personal Essay

Jacob Cavalho Personal essay

A couple of summers ago I found my self very bored and with an abundance of energy. See before that summer I spent my two month break from school at my Dinas house with my cosines playing waffle ball in her yard. But now she took a job at a daycare, my eldest cousin is working, and my other cousin Cody moved. So no more base ball for me, damn I don't know what to do with my self. So I started to go for walks / runs to burn energy. I would usually walk to maple Wood Park and then turn around before the basketball court. I started to watch the guys play basketball from a bench far enough away so they could ask me to play. It wasn't because I was shy, far from it. It was because I couldn't play basketball to save my life. I had never really bothered to learn the sport because I always had baseball in the summer and football in the winter. Sure I have shot around before but never dared to play a game with anyone. I defiantly wasn't about to enter a game with these guys who play every day. So I quietly sat and watched these guys move so fluidly around one another and I couldn't help but think that I could do that.

In the sport of football the call me liquid because of the way I run the ball. I'm not cocky I'm confident in my running ability. So now I'm thinking I could do this, it’s like football. Finally one day I man up and walk right to the court and wait for a new game to start up.

See the way it works is everybody who wants to play will stand on the court and two captains will pick there teams. After what seemed like forever I didn't get picked. I was a little disappointed but not out these guys played all day so I waited. But after three games of not getting picked I finally spoke up, big mistake, I knew it but it worked I got picked up. I was finally going to prove that I could do it. I got the ball dripped a couple of steps and took off sprinting towards the basket, but after two seconds the ball bounced off my foot and rolled away. I'm going to skip passed the rest of my first game. It was bad I suck, I hate the sport, and don't every want to play again. I have a problem where if I can't do some thing I will push my self with total disregarded for my body until I can do it. So I find a court that is very rarely used and practiced, every day for three weeks. I needed help badly so I called my friend Steve who is pretty good at basketball to train me. After watching me he tells me I have three main problems. My feet move way to fast for my hands to keep up. I don't know how to handle the ball. Also I have the worst shot he has ever seen. But he also tells me that I can be very good if I learn control.
I tackle my first and second problems at the same time I learn to slow down my movements to keep control of the ball. That wasn't too bad now I could incorporate some of my football skills into the new game. By adding jukes and spins I could easy move around Steve with ease. Now I had to take one my biggest problem my shot. “It doesn’t matter how fast I run or how sick your handles are if you cant score no ones gonna care” Steve told me one day as I broke his ankles again and missed my shot. In sports I can honestly say learning to shoot a basketball was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Three years later my shot is still bad but I worked on it for a while that summer and got it to an acceptable level. This has taken up all of my summer but I had learned all of the stupid rules of the game and could finally play at a respectful level.
I wanted to go back to the park but summer was over and only a few guys would hang around the park on the weekends. So I took advantage of it playing one on ones and earning respect with the guys. I thought that I would finally be accepted into the basketball culture. I could exchange daps with the guys after games and feel a sense of brother hood. Easy I thought to myself. But then the first snow came and killed all that you can’t play in the snow impossible.

So that winter went by as normal I played football and shoved snow. But soon enough summer rolled in and I was ready. I walked right to the park and played all day that day it felt great I still couldn’t shoot like them but I could dance around them in fluid like motions. I knew I could do it I thought to myself as I walked home. About half way through the summer the guys started talking about some thing called the black top torment. It takes place towards the end of summer ever summer. What the black top is they take an even number of people and they all play each other in one on one games to 7 in elimination basketball. I really wanted to be picked for this I wanted to prove to my self and them that I could compete in some thing that doesn’t come naturally to me. The beast way to do this is to beat ever body once so they know your good enough to compete. That is impossible there are guys who are like six foot five and have 50 pounds on me easy.
I guess I got lucky because I was asked to play by some of the bigger guys that organized it. Maybe it was a joke to them but it took it seriously and got really focused on winning the whole thing I don’t care what anybody said. By the time black top started up I hadn’t made any friends they didn’t like the way I played I was to aggressive. I pushed the rules of the sport until they were about to break I was testing to see what I could get away with.

Finally the day was here time to prove myself black top had arrived. When they picked who was playing who in the first round they left me out. I wasn’t about to let that happen so I spoke up for myself and they said “o ya we must have forgot about you” I wanted to say that that was bull shit, but I keep my cool and said what are you afraid to get beat by some kid who just learned the game you have been playing your whole life. That did it I was in but it was at a cost. They made me play the biggest and strongest guy for the first five rounds but I wasn’t afraid. I knew to keep them moving and tire them out then it was easy. The time was they weren’t playing by anybodies rules I was getting shoved, elbowed, and hit when ever I would put a clean move around them. Like I said I don’t have a lot of care for my body so I hung tuff and played though the abuse. The last game I played that day was in the sixth or seventh round it was against Tyree a rather larger man that dunked one of my missed shots to win the game. After the game I didn’t receive a good game from him or daps, just a "what did you expect" look from him in the rest of the guys.

Honestly it didn’t bother that much that I lost, it was that I didn’t have there respect that really got me down. After the game I walked away not because I was hurt it was just because that happened to be the last game of the day. I wasn’t going let them beat me mentally I would say that fifty percent of sports is mental. I learned that from football. The next day I made sure I was the first at the park. I couldn’t play but I was going to prove to them that I had heart

I stayed on the side of the court all day that day and finally someone came up to me and he started talking to me. He called me stupid in a lot of worst words but then he said that I must have the biggest tennis balls in the world. I never mentioned that I was the only white person there I played basketball with a bunch of black guys. Race doesn’t matter to me at all don’t get the wrong idea it never has. He said don’t worry about the respect thing it will come with time. I didn’t say any thing to him I just listened and when he was done talking he held out his hand for daps, I returned with completing daps.
I just what I learned from the whole experience is that basketball is really hard to play for me. That sounds bad but I see it like this, sports usually come easy for me but this one I’m still having problems with it. For me to think that I could do some thing easily, and have a really hard time with it but still push to my limits and not give up I had respect for myself at that moment. Now when I am having a hard time with some thing I always think back to the black top.