20 years later, this is what I learned from high school sports

We celebrated my 20th high school reunion this year.

It was a small meeting, but a good one. I hope the 25th is bigger and better.

With high school reunions comes nostalgia, both the good and the bad. You’re mentally distracted from being gripped by anger and fear, only to find that there’s an 18-year-old in your head who hasn’t moved on. But done right, nothing puts a smile on your face like reminiscing about shared experiences with people who can open up old memories and spark an inner joke.

As the calendar prepares for the new year, I reflected more on those high school years and what I learned from them.

My mind always goes back to my days playing for the Western Harnett Eagles – four years of basketball (including one injured season) and another “sure, why not” ?” senior tennis test.

It was not a positional job.

My running joke when I started covering high school sports was that I was the unofficial NC record holder in two sports. No one is going to have a high free throw percentage (2-for-2, thanks for asking) and no one is going to win any games (0-for-anything, I have not read them).

If I never got a scholarship on it, if I never got featured in an article or a news clip, if I never had a mixtape, if I never won a contest, if I never was and such a feeling of invincibility after the game – a winner over the enemy, what is it did I’m from high school sports, you ask?

I learned to be determined.

The fear of being cut was always there in basketball, and so making the youth team or the JV team was enough for me. But when the high school classroom was filled to the brim, working out of fear wasn’t going to make my senior year special. If there are things you want in life, you have to go for them, and this was the first time I faced this reality.

I learned that hard work will pay off, even if no one is watching.

Part-time work required self-discipline and self-discipline. I got better, but it didn’t translate into a lot of playing time. I sure didn’t quit, and that will always mean something to me in any case.

I learned to make the most of any situation.

My two games were at different levels. I actually learned tennis during the trials and I was the number one player – the fifth best player in an undefeated team. In basketball, it was like being the 14th-best player on a 15-man team – but it was a strong program, always winning at least two-thirds of its games and to sports games. Of course, it would have been nice if I could have been a good player and team at the same time, but neither situation is perfect. I still try to approach things with a glass-half-full view as much as possible.

I learned the importance of relationships.

For four years, my basketball teammates and I sweated through practice, endless workouts, team camps, and then one day we were on the bus going home. and our works were finished. I couldn’t control all my emotions. It suddenly sounded. There were no more games to play. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. So I signed up for tennis because I needed to ride some buses with friends to the games, even if the bus ride wasn’t too difficult. I still don’t like saying goodbye, but I value them more than ever now because of how “soon” this felt removed.

I learned that leadership must be courageous.

There is no need for me to go into every little detail, but my senior year of basketball could have had a better ending. It was not caused by internal conflicts that finally erupted at the wrong time. Sometimes you learn from bad examples as well as good ones, and there was a brief period where a lack of leadership at the start of the season cost us a lot later on. This fact became more apparent as I got older: you have to face conflicts as soon as they arise.

I learned the importance of having a positive attitude towards others.

There was a guy on the tennis team that the others didn’t like playing with. He hit at the wrong times and they would yell at him and he would go back and play more because he was mad, which made another player hit him more. Our coach, in a clever move, brought us together. I didn’t yell at him. I told him things like “good shot” when he hit one. We started feeding each other good energy. My coach told me “No one has ever encouraged him before.” So, by the end of the year, we were better than apart, and grew into a tough two-man team (we even won a game!). It wasn’t that I never told him to focus, or I had to pressure him in other ways. But it was a pure lesson that I was a part of that our words are very important.

I learned the importance of being a good partner.

My only high school honors came as peer awards, and that’s fine. When my coach announced that I was the winner of the “Best Teammate” award at our year-end party, there was nothing else. I didn’t know we had an award for that. The coach said that he chose the team individually and I was unanimous, so there was no reason to ask me, which is how to keep a secret. I took great comfort in knowing that I had the respect of my colleagues after all we had been through.

But the truth is that I’m not done being a teammate. We will always have colleagues. We won’t get on the bus together and hit the highway like we used to, but we will always be part of something bigger than ourselves and we will always need each other. In life’s journey, you want good teammates and would love to be a good teammate.

… 20 years later …

These lessons and stories are fresher for me than ever before, because you can never fully detach yourself from your school days while working at the same time. I returned to high school, this time as a teacher, in 2018.

Sometimes I will share some of these stories with my students. Maybe they will steal something from them. Or maybe they’re doing their own unique studies about high school sports, and they’ll come to the same conclusions on their own.

They won’t be putting my name on any court in Western Harnett anytime soon. If I didn’t write about high school sports, my name would be completely forgotten there.

But the lessons I’ve learned have made me a better (but still very imperfect) husband, father, teacher, colleague and friend.

What exactly did I get out of high school sports, you asked?

He is looking at her.