Everyone knows it sucks to get injured, but not many people have been injured themselves. not many people know what its like to sit on the sidelines and watch your teammates play a close game, knowing that you can't go in when coach is looking is looking for a sub. That is what I had to go thru when i was diagnosed with osgood schlatters. osgood schlatters is a growing condition that happens when you grow too fast it can be very painful or it can be not painful at all. I delt with this condition threw the basketball year but then after the year was done the doctor said I can't play sports for a couple of months. I was signed up for a rochester pacesetter tournament with the best players from our ninth grade team, and now I couldn’t play. The THird game was the hardest I have seen my team play, And what I learned from this game would change my life forever.

In the first game we won with little competition but we know that if we got big heads that it would be hard to win the next game. In between the first game And the second game we sat as a team and relaxed, thinking of what was to come. I knew I couldn't play because of my osgood but I was still talking to my team as I was ready to play. In the second game we played as a team and that is why we won. we moved the ball and took unselfish shots. We didn’t talk back to them when they swore at us. There is this nothing harder to do then stay humble when you are winning a close game. As we approached the third and final game of the day “the championship” we were all nervous but knew what had to be done. We started warming up and watching them warm up as well, and they were good.
When we huddled up befor the game coach told us that this win had to come from the heart. He told us that we would have to hustle after every loose ball and play out of our minds. At the tip off we were all were ready to win. In the first 5 minutes of the first half we were up by ten and thought the game was ours, but at the end of the first half we were down by ten and thinking the game was lost. I was the waterboy because I couldn't play, and befor I left to fill up the water bottles everyone was quiet. When I was filling up the watter bottles I was thinking how mad everyone would be if we lost, but when I returned It was like everyone got their second wind and was ready to go play some basketball and all those thoughts I had about us losing were gone. When we stepped foot on the court we knew the game was ours. We hit the almost all our shots and created turnover after turnover. With a minute to go we were down by three.
At the one minute mark coach called a timeout. He started talking about what we had to do. we need to keep playing hard nose defence and not allow easy shots and we have to keep making our shots. When the timeout was over both teams knew that there could only be one winner and both teams thought it would be them. it was even until the last ten seconds. At ten seconds we were down by 3 still and had to make a shot and get the ball agen. the ball was was inbounded and pushed up the court to jason who had been having a rough game he set up and nailed the jumper from the elbow. We had there defence on their heels.when they got the ball to inbound it we were pressing hoping to get a five second call, but what happened was even better. they stepped over the out of bounds line and gave us a chance to score. coach called another timeout and drew up the perfect plan and our job was to go execute that plan. We had two seconds and knew it was do or die. the reff handed mason the ball out of bounds and mason passed the ball to tanner coming off the screen and he shot off balance. I thought it was over for us. The buzzer sounded and the ball went in. We were going to state.
The gym went quiet when the ball went thru the hoop and then broke out into a loud roar of cheering. I was happy and sad at the same time. I was happy because I knew that I could play at the state tournament but. I was sad because I couldn't be on the floor when the buzzer sounded at this tournament. This taught me to go hard at whatever I do so I don't regret missing a single game. I also learned that you have to be thankful for every game that I can play. I am glad that my condition only made me miss a basketball tournament.
Missing a basketball tournament is nothing compared to pising a family vacation or some other big event like that. I'm glad that my condition is one that I could recover from, because I know that there are much worse conditions that could have ended my sports career all together. So many people think they have it bad where they miss a game or two but it is really hard to watch your teammates win a close game to qualify for state. That is Why I like to tell my story and tell people that they could have it much worse.