As I sit on the bench for my break, I’m panting trying to catch my breath and the sweat is dripping off of my nose. I hear my name called, “Pinner, you’re in”

“Me?” I replied, a bit puzzled.

“Yeah you! Get over here!”

I didn’t quite understand why he wanted to put me in but I quickly got up to enter the game. The refs whistle for subs and I walk onto the court, everyone looks exhausted as it was a very back-and-forth overtime quarter. I needed to play well, we were the last place team actually contesting the first place team in the first game of playoffs, it felt like a March Madness game where the sixteen seed upsets the two or three seed. We were about to tip off when the referee reminded us that it was a sudden death from here on out, first score wins. Everyone kind of seemed shocked, but nobody was going to complain to the ref and get on their bad side, especially when a call our way would be nice. The ref threw up the ball and it looked like it kind of tilted the other teams way but we still got the ball, my point guard took the ball and we moved up the court, he was calling out plays but it was all a blur, my mind was dead and I was pretty much running off of muscle memory, he couldn’t get a pass off so he created his own shot and missed. The other team grabbed the rebound and they were trying to push and end the game, we were all hustling back but they were just too fast. They had an easy lay up until out of nowhere I saw our big man coming sprinting down the court, faster than I’d ever seen him run, and he swatted the ball as the other player released it. There was a big gasp from the small crowd of parents and siblings, and we all of a sudden had the big burst of confidence we needed since we had been missing it all game and that’s why we were in the position we were. We weren’t quite celebrating yet. They still had the ball and had a good chance to score off of the inbound.

Coach was yelling at us, we were tired and sweating, “Push yourselves!” I didn’t even know who was talking at this point. I was just running up and down the court, mindlessly, like a robot building a car at a factory. We worked until we dropped, coach looked at us and said “that’s going to pay off one day boys.”

They threw the ball deep and we gave them slack, if they were going to score they were going to have to shoot a deep shot. They kept trying to penetrate the paint but we weren’t letting them in, they settled for the outside shot and missed which was huge. We were sprinting down the court, trying to push the ball so we could end the game. I went down to the corner and nobody covered me, I cut straight to the hoop and I felt the ball enter my hands; honestly the next couple seconds were a blur, I only remember being trampled by my teammates, I had never felt so on top of the world but so clueless at the same time. It was a feeling of greatness.

Looking back now, the only reason I made that shot is because that was a particular shot that I practiced a lot, just a little floater from the baseline, but it ended up paying off in the end because of the hard work I not only put into that shot, but the work I also put in to be conditioned well enough to keep pushing through that game, all the times I had a coach yelling at my team and I, had paid off at that very moment. Even though I don’t play basketball anymore, I’ve taken the lesson of hard work pays off with to more than one place other than basketball, I take it with me to my workplace now and I was only hired for part time work but now they want to keep me because they really like the way I work. In school I try to work my hardest and it now pays off with my grades. That’s one thing I will never be able to pay back to my former coaches, but I am forever grateful.