Sporting memories: Practicing a lot and becoming better than someone who always bested me on the court

I played a lot of sports as a kid. It was strongly encouraged, I would say basically enforced in my family for me and all of my siblings as well. From the time I have memories of being alive I was participating in some sort of sport and because of this I ended up being pretty darn good at all of them... except baseball, that sport always eluded me.

There was this one kid that I went to middle school with that had his growth spurt early and he was pretty damn strong for someone that was 11 or 12 years old. I went to a small school so we would frequently compete in sports. I recall that while I was better than he was at soccer/football, I was better than him in this mostly because of the fact that he didn't play it. He was more of a "hands sports" kind of person. The one sport that we had in common though was the great art of basketball and this was something that my family spent a lot of time on.

JJ was taller than me, stronger than me, and likely faster than me and when we would play basketball JJ would always best me. Not only that, but he was kind of a jerk about it. The kids I knew back then were fairly innocent so the trash talk wasn't that bad and even though JJ was black and I am white, there was nothing racial about it either. That just happened to be the case.

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JJ and I would play regularly in and outside of school and most of the time he would beat me in 1 on 1. We were pretty young so this didn't really bother me as much as it likely would have once I was older but I had a secret weapon that JJ didn't have: A YMCA membership.

In the city I went to middle and high school in, the YMCA was right next to the library. On school nights and some weekends, my parents would drop all of us kids off there and we were told "homework first, then go to the Y and do whatever you want." The most popular thing to do at the YMCA was pickup games of basketball and while you waited for your shot at getting on a court, there was a practice area to the side for dribbling, practicing layups, shooting, whatever. I would imagine I spent a good 1-2 hours 5 days a week for several years. If you do something that frequently you can't really help but end up getting better at it. Some days were better than others of course and some days I would get into double digits when playing with a team and other days I felt like I couldn't get anything to drop. On really bad days I would have my shots swatted out of the sky by older and taller players.

For the most part it was a pretty safe yet competitive environment because adults who were employed by the YMCA were always there making sure that the youth didn't get all wild and start fighting one another. Today is a very different society so I don't know how that would work today... we still respected authority back then, what can I say?

Anyway, during summer break between my 6th and 7th grades of school I had been doing a lot of basketball and while I didn't see JJ very often during the summer since we were in different social circles, I did see him as soon as we got back to school and let's just say that my confidence was pretty damn high after all of that practice over 3 months.

It didn't happen right away, but eventually during PE class, JJ and I finally had a game of 1 on 1. I remember that day even now decades later because this was one of the last times that JJ would ever play 1 on 1 against me. The trash talking was happening at the start but I faked a drive to the basket, laid up a medium distance 2 point shot and drained it, nothing but net.

This was a game called "make it take it" meaning that if you made your shot you still had possession . On the next play I double faked the same play only this time JJ was very interested in swatting my shot out of the sky. JJ was significantly taller than I was so this was something that in the past he would have been able to do on a regular basis and was a great source of his trash talk. Things were different now though because I had learned a lot at the YMCA over the summer. I stutter stepped like I was going to shoot and he took the bait and jumped high up to block the shot that never happened... Instead I calmly strode around him and got the easy layup. The game continued like this for the rest of the game to 11 points when each basket counts as 1 point with me nailing shots from all over the place, most of which just went straight in with extreme accuracy.

Let's just say that JJ wasn't talking any trash then and could tell he was starting to get frustrated because he started playing rougher. JJ and I were friends so there was no chance he was going to intentionally foul me and this is part of the game that I was prepared for again, because of all the practice at the YMCA over the past months. He was swiping for steals but if he over-extended this left me an opportunity to dribble behind the back and then head towards the hoop like I was going for a layup but I again would do a head fake and he would fly past me, really eager for the blocked shot and I would just stand there, then take an easy shot from very close distance.

The game ended 11-2 and there were observers. Despite the fact that JJ had been trash-talking me for years and being a bit of a bully, I did NOT return the favor and instead gave him a high-5 and said "good game" because this was mandatory at the YMCA regardless of the outcome. I remember asking JJ if he wanted to "go again" but he said something that I don't remember... some reason why he couldn't go again. As I mentioned before this would be the very last time I would ever play JJ in 1 on 1 basketball. In team basketball I could tell that the tables had turned and he was hesitant to try to guard me but team basketball is a very different sport than 1 v 1.

This is just an exhibit, a real-life example I suppose, about how you can have all the physical traits necessary to succeed in a sport but if you don't actually practice, the people who maybe don't have those attributes are going to pass you by. Practice was not something that was important to JJ and he never really amounted to much in any organized sport. Sadly, I don't think that JJ had the sort of family support that I did and he didn't get the encouragement to engage in any sports other than the ones we were forced to do during PE class. Sports were really not optional in my family. JJ and I ended up going to different high schools and lost touch, but I never heard of him participating in any team sports later on in life.

It's a real shame for him because that dude was tall and strong by a lot of standards and I think that if he had applied himself or had the parental presence to be urged to apply himself, that he really could have achieved greatness in any sport that he wanted.

I met him on a baseball pickup game in a park years later and well, he was still a lot better at that than I was... so he'll always have that.