I Attend My First Practice

Coach Hendrix walked to the front of the bleachers and surveyed his team, focusing mostly on the younger players. He looked at each player individually and when he looked at me, I could feel his eyes boring into mine. I noticed that he wasn't sizing up anybody or trying to measure their physical strength. He was just looking straight into the players' eyes, looking for mental determination. I was going to give him some. Unlike some of the freshmen, I didn't blink or look away when his eyes fell upon me. I stared right back at him, trying my best to match his intensity without looking like I was constipated. Before he moved on to someone else, I noticed the coach nod his head in a quick motion that I almost missed. I wasn't sure whether he was impressed or not. If he was, he made no further notion to inform me of it. He simply continued on until he had convened a three second meeting with every player on the team.

The coach stepped back and motioned to two of the older players, who I recognized to be Gavin and Liam. The two older players jumped down the bleachers as the coach muttered something inaudible to them.

I felt a sudden pang of jealously, and I immediately knew why. I used to be the one that the coach would single out to give the practice plan to. But alas, it was a different situation now. There was no going back to middle school. That ship had long since sailed.

Gavin and Liam nodded to the coach and headed to the far right side of the court. Coach Hendrix muttered something to Coach Myers, the assistant coach, who also nodded. Hendrix looked down at some papers on a clipboard and traced his finger across the page, deep in thought. Then he seemingly finished and looked back up at the group in the bleachers.

"Okay folks," he said. "Welcome to the first practice. If you're here today, that means you've made it past tryouts and are on the team. I am going to read out a list of all of you, along with the team that you made it on. Varsity and JV will practice separately here for the most part, but we may combine occasionally for scrimmages. I will be focusing mostly on the JV team today to get them started but in future practices I'll probably spend more time with the older team. With myself and Coach Myers here, we should be able to efficiently coach both teams. Alright, here we go. On Varsity, we have Gavin, Liam, Alexander, Oscar, Enzo, Brian, Dan, Chris, Matthew, Dan, Carter, and John. On JV, we have Jackson, Chance, Wesley, Amir, Finn, Xavier, Nathan, Colton, Cameron—"

"Cam," said Cam from beside me. "It's Cam."

Coach Hendrix looked at him like he was about to give him a lecture on interrupting, but decided not to. He continued. "Colton, Cam, Zane, Max, Tucker, Levi, Diego, and Blake."

I let out a sigh of relief. For a moment, I thought that he wasn't going to say my name. That I hadn't made the team after all.

"I went over a lot of stuff at the tryouts, so I'm just going to get started here. If you made the Varsity team, join Gavin and Liam over at the back of the court. They'll gather your requested jersey numbers and sizes. JV team, take the other half of the court, get a ball, and start the layup drill. If you don't know what that is, you'll learn quickly."

I, of course, knew exactly what the layup drill was, so I started the line on the right side while Jackson grabbed the ball. Everyone else either lined up behind me or on the left side behind Chance. When Jackson returned with the ball I motioned for him to take the spot in front of me, but he just shook his head and tossed me the ball, jogging to the back of the line. Great, I thought. I'm first.

I dribbled down and thankfully made the layup. Layups were one thing that I could still do properly. I looked to see if the coach had seen that—he had—before making my way over to the left line. As I was heading toward the left line, though, I felt something hard hit my back. I turned to see Chance stick his hands up in mock surrender.

"My fault," he said, picking up the ball. "Accidentally lost control."

There was no way that the incident had been an accident, but I decided to let it slide. After all, what could I do? I could feel the coach's eyes on the back of my neck. So I turned back around again and got in the back of the left line.

The JV team shot layups and rebounded for about fifteen minutes, before the coach finished assessing or whatever he was doing, and we started another drill. This one was a standard three-pointer drill where one player would stand at five different spots on the three-point line and shoot until he had made from all five. Another player would rebound the shots. I wasn't too confident about this drill as I had been about the layup one, and for good reason. After I had taken my turn on this drill, I counted that I had taken roughly twenty-some shots before sinking all five three-pointers. For me, this was bad. In comparison, Jackson completed it in seven shots, Chance in eight, Cam in thirteen, Nathan in fourteen, and some kid who I think was Wesley in eleven. There were some who did as miserably as me, but most of them looked to be centers so it didn't make me feel much better.

We had some more drills, in which I did mediocre at best, and then the coach called us in to pick out jerseys. I chose my middle school jersey number, which was 2. Cam got number 12, Nathan number 4, Max number 14, Jackson number 1, and Chance number 3. Everyone else picked jerseys too, but I didn't pay much attention to them because I didn't know their names. After Coach Hendrix was done giving out jerseys numbers, everyone started another drill. I decided to approach the coach to ask him something that had been on my mind the entire practice.

"What is it, son?" Hendrix asked, looking up from his clipboard.

"Oh, well I was just wondering," I said, "why did you accept me onto the team?"

The coach looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you've surely seen my shots today, and in tryouts. It's horrendous. So why am I on the team?"

Coach Hendrix seemed to take great interest in this question. I watched as he tossed around the answer in his head before coming to a conclusion.

"You're Blake, correct?"

I nodded.

"Well Blake, being a high school basketball coach, it is beneficial for me to go to some middle school games, to get a look at my upcoming talent. I've been to your middle school games, and I've seen the way you play. That's why I accepted you onto the team."

I thought about this, and decided it didn't answer my question. "Okay, but you saw me out there several minutes ago. Do you want that on the team?"

"I accepted Blake Manson onto my team," the coach said flatly. "And maybe your shooting skill right now doesn't match that of the Blake Manson I saw play, but I didn't accept Blake Manson on the team for just his shooting skill. Sure, his shooting was impressive. But I also saw the way he single-handedly led the entire team on the court. I saw how he calculated his opponent before making a move. I saw the way he looked at the court like it was a maze and everything on it like obstacles. I saw the way he came to visit my games just as I had visited his, just to see what he needed to prepare for. That's the Blake Manson I accepted on the team. Now maybe you're not there right now, for any number of reasons, but I figure that it's my job as a coach and yours as a player to get you there. So go out and improve your game, to become the Blake Manson that you want to be."

Wow. I knew there was nothing I could possibly think of to say to that. So I nodded and turned to join the drill, smiling all the while. That coach could give one heck of a pep talk. So I finished the practice strong. We didn't do anything other than drills and I didn't necessarily perform any better at the drills, but I never gave up. I kept on trying, because I had an end goal in mind. One that exceeded the middle school Blake Manson for a thousand miles. And I was going to reach that end goal, no matter how long it took or how hard it was.

Practice wrapped up and Gavin lead the cheer to end the practice. Afterwards, Cam, Nathan, and I (Max had some other business to attend to) went to Sweet Shack to refuel ourselves and talk about practice.

When I got home, I collapsed on the coach and welcomed a wildly licking Otis onto my lap.

"And where exactly were you?" asked my dad, who I hadn't even noticed sitting in the recliner several feet away.

"Practice," I answered simply.

"Practice?" he repeated. "Practice for what?"

"Basketball," I replied.

"I thought you had given up that sport," he said coolly.

I realized that he must have overheard one of my phone conversations with my friends. That, or he had been eavesdropping. Either way, I didn't see why he seemed to care. He never seemed to be too involved in anything else I did.

"Well, you thought wrong," I said before I could stop myself. It had come out colder than I had wanted it to. I found sudden interest in the backsides of Otis' ears.

"Don't talk back to me boy, you hear?" he said just as cold.

"Yes sir," I answered, trying my best to deescalate the situation. I wasn't sure if it worked, and I didn't plan to stick around and find out. I leaned forward to let Otis know I was moving and give him time to jump off before I headed upstairs, with the pug right on my heels.

I entered my room and sat down on my bed. Liv looked back at me and started to close the tab on the laptop, but I motioned that she could keep playing. She smiled really big and went back to whatever she was doing as I leaned back on my bed. All I wanted was a quiet place to think. But I should have known that no room with Liv in it was a quiet one.

"So how'd it go?" she asked enthusiastically.

"How did what go?" I asked.

"Your practice!"

I smiled. It felt nice to have someone be genuinely interested in what I was doing.

"It went fi—" I started to say, before stopping myself. I had decided not to keep anything from friends, and Liv was just trying to be friendly. The least I could do is be honest with her. "It was the first practice," I explained, "and I'm not exactly where I want to be just yet. I know I can do better."

"I know you can too," Liv said, turning toward me and grinning. "My big brother can do anything!"

She turned back around and I slid off my bed and crossed my arms around her neck.

"Which big brother?" I demanded playfully. "What big brother aren't you telling me about?"

Liv shrieked with laughter and wriggled out of my reach to resume her game, continuing to giggle for the next several minutes. I leaned back and started to imagine myself playing basketball as a high schooler, as I had many times before. Except this time, it was close to becoming a reality.