Basketball: A Communication Game

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High school basketball is not only a mental sport, but, also, a communication game. You must be able to communicate very well to play in Morgantown, West Virginia, especially at University High School. To make the team, you have to be basketball knowledgeable, talented, physically fit, and vocal. After four years of playing varsity basketball, the vocal part of the sport has helped me out in the long run.

There are five positions in basketball: point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center, but, the most important position is the point guard. The point guard is the quarterback or floor general of the team. You have to be very vocal to run the team and call the shots. If you are not vocal, you will be sitting the bench or worse, in the stands.

The shooting guard is the second most important player on the hardwood floor. He is the one running back or sergeant of basketball team. It’s, also, important for the shooting guard to be vocal as well. With out the point guard or shooting guard, you can not run the plays or even have a chance to win the big game.

The small forward, power forward, and center is, equally, the third import. Without these “big men,” you can not get hard set picks or the back door cuts for a heart-stopping slam dunk. These two little things are a big part in a winning team. You have to be able to pick a defender to let a teammate get by and you have to do back door cuts to get wide open lay-ups. Former teammates, power forward from 2000-2004, Dom Claudio and ,former center from 2004-2007, Grant Meadows did these two crucial things and it paid off for one of them at the end. One earning an athletic scholarship to West Virginia Wesleying as a red shirt freshman for the 2007-2008 season.

As a former point guard and shooting guard for the University High Hawks, I, also, had a shot to play Division I, in Michigan for the Wolverines and Spartans and West Virginia for the Mountaineers, and Division II, in West Virginia for the Fairmont State Falcons. With all this excitement, I was told that my talent stood out but, I was the best vocal player these four schools have seen but, my dream of playing college basketball ended when I received a brutal knee injury in the beginning of the season of my senior year in high school.

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