Drive
...on my team. After practice the coach called me over. I was sure I was going to get kicked off of the team. I would be the first kid ever to be cut from the YMCA’s 5th grade basketball team. Luckily, all he wanted to show me was how to shoot right-handed lay-ups correctly. After watching what he did three or four times, I was pretty sure I had it down. I tried to make the lay-up again, but I again switched the ball back to my left hand and bounced it off the underside of the rim. Coach told me, “Just keep working on it; it does not come naturally to everyone.” I was glad it was Friday and was ready to get home after what seemed to me, at the time, to be the worst basketball practice ever. When I got home, I ate dinner, showered, and went to my room to be alone. I spent the rest of that night thinking about what I did wrong and how I could fix it. The next morning, I got up early and headed to the local elementary school playground. There were five full-length courts. The first two courts had L-shaped supports and the other were just on straight poles. Why people, most of them black, came from all over the city to play at Loughborough, which was a white neighborhood, was a mystery to me. It was always busy there, but people from all walks of life congregated there because of their love for the sport. I made my way to one of the empty baskets that had a straight pole. I spent three or four hours there, trying to make right handed lay-ups. I tried to do it just like the coach had shown me the day before in practice. There was something in my mind that made me switch the ball to my left hand before I shot it. I worked very hard that day on using my right hand. When I made my first right handed lay-up I felt very proud of myself. I probably shot three hundred lay-ups that day and only made about twenty, but those felt like they were the twenty most important baskets ever. The next Friday night we had practice again. As with ninety percent of the basketball practices I have ever been to, we started out with lay-up drills. I once again studied the right-handed kids in front of me as they took their shots. When it was my turn I began to feel confident in my abilities, but I was also scared of failure at the same time. I slowly dribbled towards the basket and hopped off my left foot. With the ball still in my right hand, I softly bounced the ball off of the backboard and into the basket. I ran back to the end of the line with my head held as high as if I had just made a game-winning shot. Being able to make right handed lay-ups helped me out as I played more basketball. In time, I became very comfortable shooting with my rig...