How Basketball Changed My Life

Basketball isn’t my favorite sport. I am not particularly good at it and it will probably never change my life in the future. Still, the sport cemented a core belief of mine: Perseverance can accomplish anything.
Amid our school work, extracurriculars, and computer games, my friends and I always made time to go to the courts and play for a couple hours. Every weekend, if it was neither wet nor windy outside, they would drag me from my desk to walk with them to our high school where the courts were. While my friends were eager to play, I was never as excited as them. We’ve been playing for several years but I have only been able to advance my skill by a small margin.
When our group of friends first started meeting at the courts, I was the only one that didn’t know how to play. I had never even dribbled a ball before. I knew that I shouldn’t expect to be as good as any of the other guys, but I figured with enough practice I’d be playing at their level in no time.

My friends helped me with some techniques and tried to guide me to improve, but my progress was slow. I began to question if maybe there was something physically wrong with my legs or arms because I could not fathom any reason why the tried and true “practice makes perfect” technique wasn’t working. Growing up I was taught “Never give up” from martial arts training, and “Do or do not, there is no try” from a certain sci-fi trilogy. Up to this point, everything I had accomplished was done with a little bit of practice. I could lead a string quartet through classical pieces, understand and use advanced concepts in calculus, and dominate the battlefield in a video game, but I could not shoot a hoop from anywhere on the court other than the free throw