CFS Career

I grew up with four older brothers, all of whom played basketball for our homeschool group's basketball organization, making it almost a guarantee that I would also play. More than that however, I had been playing in youth leagues since 3rd grade and enjoying every year of it. By the time I was approaching 7th grade, I was ready to step into the lights of actual competitive jr-high basketball, but was not anticipating just how hard the trasition would be for me.

My 7th and 8th grade years were tough - I had never realized that the youth league games I had played in were not made up of quality jr-high and high-school prospects, but rather those that played for fun or wouldn't have a chance in their school's programs. The level step-up of playing against up to freshmen-level competition was more than I could handle at the time. It wasn't until late in my 8th grade year that I started putting things together, helping bring in the junior high's first gold trophy in some time at a local junior high tourny.

The following year, my team was dominant as I found myself in the main role of top defender on the team and Mr. Basics Man: passing well, making good decisions, etc; however, scoring was still not a forte of mine. Our team went on to take first in every single tournament we went to, including one where we were mistakenly scheduled incorrectly and ended up having to play all four games on the same Saturday.

As I transitioned into highschool, the current varsity coach only wanted 8 guys on the team, for whatever reason, and a Junior Varsity squad was formed. As the new main starter on the team, I needed to find a way to score since there were really only 2 others that could do so and we didn't have a super reliable point guard. Having no experience in needed to be the scorer, it made that year very strange and much of a struggle, but we managed to take third at the end season tournament, ousting the first place seed to secure a podium finish

My Junior year, I was the best 6th man in the league - a consitent sub to give our Forwards a break, our main defender a break, even our Centers a break in the thick of it. I could play all the positions, except point guard of course. I still struggled with scoring. Mainly because our coach seemed to take missed shots poorly and often sat players down for such, no matter how well they were performing. Our team went on to place 5th in the public school invitational tournament that year, take second in our league, and first in the year end tournament.

In my final year playing competitive basketball, I finally put most of my game together. I tried to drown out the thought of being sat for missing shots and focus on making my shots, I was more aggressive to the basket, and I played even more stellar defense. The driving force of our offense was our point guard however, and mid-way through the season, he went down with a complete ACL tear. After that our team was never the same, but yet we still managed to place second in our leauge and the end of year tournament.

During my 6th grade year, I was coerced into trying track. I had no interest in it, and honestly did not enjoy it, but I still managed to obtain a silver medal in the 4x200m relay as a souvenir of that expedition.

At the end of my basketball career, the homeschool organization managed to put together a men's volleyball team. I decided to give it a try at the end of my senior year, and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. Our team never took any medals home, but we did beat our rival school on their senior night which, as you can imagine, is very satisfying!