Hard Work Over Talent

Hard Work Over Talent

I was in the bathroom for three hours, heartbroken. I had been playing basketball since I was seven years old. My passion for basketball came when my dad first got me a basketball, I spent all of my days outside shooting hoops from then on. Besides surfing, that’s the only sport that I enjoy playing. My best memory was when I made the “A” team in BYC basketball. This was the first year that I did not make a competitive sports team. I do not know why I got cut. It didn’t make sense I did everything perfect in that tryout. When I asked the coach why I didn’t make the team. He said that I didn’t have the intangibles; the height, the speed, and the agility. I was devastated because I felt completely helpless.

Basketball Dunk

I was in my room, it was just an hour after tryouts. I sat in my bed and watched TV. My life felt completely empty, my favorite thing was taken away from me and I couldn’t go back in time to change anything. The rest of the night, I just sat in my bed in complete solstice watching my favorite movie “Mean Girls.” When the movie ended I just stayed up surfing channels. That’s when I saw a 30/30 on Michael Jordan. According to the show Michael Jordan was cut from the Varsity basketball team. He then went on to work tirelessly to become the best basketball player to live. I really enjoyed the show so I continued to watch the next 30/30. The one on Herschel Walker. He talked about how he was bullied for being chubby and unathletic. That summer he said that he did three thousand push ups and sit ups a day. In addition to that, he raced the train daily. He became one of the strongest running backs of all time. According to the show, an All-American athlete and heisman safety said he couldn’t tackle him, “It was like tackling a tree trunk.” If those two extraordinary athletes can accomplish those feats, I figured that I also could make the basketball team in high school next year. Tomorrow would be the first day of training.

My training for basketball was very rigorous, I had a diet, workout regimen, and skills workouts. My diet was very strict, protein enriched foods only, such as turkey, fish, beans, etc. I also had a lot of carbohydrates to give me energy in my lifts, the basic pasta diet. In addition to that I only drank water and milk. At least 120 oz of water a day. For my workouts, I ran at least 1.5 miles a day, and workout out my legs, using explosive exercise movements to aid me in my sport. The skill exercises that I did were all shooting, and dribbling based because I was not six feet tall. Over the course of the months I also grew from 5’5 to 5’7. I was ready for my high school basketball season. I even attended most of the open gyms so I could be noticed by the coaches. In one month the tryouts would happen and I really wanted to make the freshman basketball team.

Tryouts week could not have come faster. I was so nervous, this past year I worked so hard to become what I have become. When the tryout day came however, the Varsity basketball coach asked me to tryout with the JV and Varsity. I was so nervous on the inside. When tryouts were about start I got butterflies in my stomach, I was excited to try out, I wanted to be here. During the tryouts, I went off. All of my shots would go in, and I out physicaled every girl there. I could not believe how only year of work could help me so much. I made the Varsity team and I was excited.

My high school basketball career went really well. I set a record for the most points scored in a basketball career, the single season, and I made the 1,000 + point club. I could not have been more grateful. I even made the national team, where I was named the McDonald’s all American. I decided to continue my basketball career at Harvard university. I was torn between what colleges I wanted to go to. I was told that I could go to UCONN and possibly go into the WNBA. But, I could get a better education at Harvard, and leave with a degree in business.

Currently, I am the commissioner of the WNBA through my knowledge of basketball, and hard work I was nominated for the position. Not only that, I became the youngest female basketball commissioner of all time.