Personal Narrative: My Failure As A Basketball Player

Failure can be a blessing depending on how a person looks at it. No one is fortunate enough to go through life without failure it is unavoidable. If you learn from your shortcomings you can come back stronger the next time. Every great individual, team, or group of people has experienced failure. My shortcomings my sophomore year of Basketball made me grow as a player and a person.

As a sophomore on the varsity basketball team is was placed with the toughest position of all, point guard. The point guard is the general of the team his actions affect the team's performance the most. Coming in I never played the true point guard spot before so it was a new experience. Being the youngest starter also put heavy pressure on me. I was awful,I just couldn't let the game come to me. Everything was way too fast for me and our team's performance showed. I turned the ball over countless times per game. In my mind I was hopeless but as my sophomore season went

on I became more comfortable in the roll. My coach Steve Nowak would always sit me down and tell me countless times that I had the hardest job. He would tell me that I'm young and the more I play and grow the better I will be. I surely didn't believe him at all because we weren't playing to our expectations and I would always put that load on myself. As the season came to a close I found myself in a position of questioning. Do I feel sorry for myself or do I work all spring during aau season and work all summer and change my mindset ? I choose to work, I worked all summer not only physically but mentally I studied my game.
My father and I spoke for countless hours on how to carry myself as a point guard and a leader. As my junior season began I had the same result as the year before until a phone call from my father came after a tough loss early in the season. He told me to relax and think about the tears I shed last year and the pain I felt from all the defeat I faced. From that phone call on I never looked back. My junior year I bursted out of my sophomore shell and was the clear leader and point guard every night. I brought my A game and was selected as all conference and the mvp of the team. I helped lead us to the state quarterfinals and received tremendous praise from all my peers and coaches. The tears I shed and pain I felt that sophomore lead me to become the point guard I am now, calm and collective. I'm now the captain of the team but without those deep moments of failure I wouldn't be the player I am today. I'm thankful for my failure and shortcomings because now I look back and say those moments made me who I am today, which is a leader who will take his team into battle and not look back.
On the personal side i learned so much from that year.

All the pressure i had put on me caused me to act out and not be myself. I constantly was in a battle between myself due to the pressure I was under, i just felt I couldn't be myself. Surely as that year went on I came into myself and that developed on into the next year. My junior year I was able to just be me, I no longer had to try so hard to be something else. I felt such a great deal of pressure fall off my once heavy shoulders. I was now at peace with myself, which really helped me do my job better. With those transitions i now found the game to be fun once again no longer was it just a job, no longer was it something i went out and did with fear in my eyes. I was myself just that fun loving guard from long island, and my game really showed. I always will remember my junior year as one of the best years of my young life. That year i feel was the turning point for me, the start of a beautiful journey in not only the game of basketball but in the game of

life.