Growing up I enjoyed making music and playing basketball, but never knew it would actually become beneficial. Music was my first love and right after was basketball. One taught me interesting life lessons the other became financially beneficial.
Around the 6th grade, I was introduced to the game of basketball by a friend of mine Toulaghn. Similar to how author July Westhale was taught to not say trailer, her granddad thought it had a bad meaning. We were in gym class at the time, loud noises with kids running and the sun beaming through the 30-foot gymnasium windows. As usual, I would sit along the wall avoiding the sun. Probably watching Toulaughn and the other guy's who played ball run up and down the court. Today they didn't have enough players so they asked if I wanted to play. I looked at them and said "yea but I don't really know how to play or know any rules". Toulaughn grabbed a basketball demonstrating the basic rules of the game. He threw me another ball explaining to me how my hands should be placed and where I should release the ball.
I'm super open-minded so of course; I wanted to
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One month later its basketball tryouts school started in September so it was mid-October. Basketball season is approaching again and so are tryouts. This time I made a name for myself people knew I could ball. My confidence was through the roof, but now I had to display my talents to the coaching staff. This time I'm successful I make the team and even become head captain of the team. Every day after school I had the practice to get prepared for the season. During the season a couple of high school coaches took notice of my play and offered me to play at their schools. I accepted to play at Hyde Park Academy where I would attend the following year. Right before the season or basketball tryouts even started I broke my foot. My freshman year of playing basketball in high school was
Basketball is a big part of my life, one year ago in tournament final game two of our best players were hurt and the team was relying on me. With the time winding down on the clock we were down 8 points. Somehow I got our deficit down to two points with 30 seconds left, after an intense defensive stop 10 seconds remained on the clock; our coach called a timeout. A play was drawn up for me to take the shot. Mitchell inbounded the ball to me as I came off of a screen, I had an some-what wide open shot, I took the shot, you could hear the crowd go silent as the ball left my hand and headed towards the basketball. It felt like everything was going slow motion, the ball was getting closer and closer to the hoop and I…….missed it. The buzzer sounded
Later we had our first football game and I was excited for my last first game in high school, I never would have known that it potentially could have been my last game played. Within the first quarter I had broken my foot completely and because of my adrenaline I shrugged it off as a minor injury and played the rest of the game. After to what seemed like I was fine I stood up and collapsed as soon as I did so. This was the first injury that I had ever sustained and I was still in denial thinking I had just sprained a muscle. After being told that I wouldn’t be able to play for the rest of the season I was heartbroken, along with this the college that I had hoped to attend the most being West GA dropped me as a recruit. Two games passed and I was feeling helpless for myself, I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t do anything without the help of others, I had crutches but being a 320 lb. man it was very difficult getting around. As Nancy Mairs said: “I’ve been limping along for ten years now” I was off of my feet for 2 weeks and to me it felt like an eternity. This was when I decided to let college aside and all I wanted to do was finish my senior season strong, my mother allowed me to get my cast taken off and have me put into a boot. For the remaining games I roughed it out and played with a broken foot. Even with
As soon as I started high school, my goal was to play college baseball. I played baseball for a very competitive select club that traveled out of town every week from Thursday through Sun as well as practicing every Tuesday and Wednesday. All through high school, I sacrificed my free time in the summer to prepare myself for college baseball. After receiving offers from four year universities as well as junior colleges, I decided that a junior college would provide me the best opportunity to continue to develop as a player. Even though I decided I wanted to play at a junior college, I wanted the experience of going away to college and living in a dorm so I decided to attend a junior college in Iowa where they had dorms for student athletes. Being ecstatic to be able to go off to college and play baseball was short lived. During the first month of baseball practice, I injured my arm, spent two months in physical therapy with no improvement, and then finally receiving the bad news that I would need surgery to improve. Surgery was performed over Thanksgiving break, but I was now faced with months of physical therapy, which meant
I have loved music ever since I was young. All the catchy tunes and captivating lyrics have touched my heart and has had a great effect on my life. Music seems to change what's going on in the world around me. If I feel sad and lonely, I love to listen to upbeat songs which make me want to dance like no one is around and sing like no one is listening. When I daydream, I always listen to smooth jazz because it reminds me of my Grandfather.Some songs remind me of people I love. Whenever I hear Stevie Wonder's hit song "What a Wonderful World" it brings tears to my eyes because it lets me know that he is saying hello to us from heaven. I also think of my Nana when I hear the song "I just Called to Say I Love You" or "Say Something". I also musicals whether they are on the television, at the movies, or the theatre. When I was three years old, my parents took me to Toronto to see the Lion King Musical. This memory will stay in my mind forever. Regardless of the genres of music today, my moods change with the music I am listening to.
I figured that I had grown about five inches since my freshman year and had gotten stronger it might be time to play basketball competitively once more. When November rolled around I was on the varsity team, but unfortunately my basketball skills was not up to par. It was tough at first, because I was a new face on the team, and the guys on the team had a great chemistry that they had built up throughout the years. After a few weeks had rolled by, I realized that I would not be in the rotation.I told myself that the team’s success is more important than my personal desired statistics.I decided to make the most of my role on the team. It was a tradition for the guys who were not in the rotation to contribute to the game in some way, guys did this by preforming stunts after significant plays and momentum shifts in the game in our favor. This was great because the crowd loved and it and more importantly my teammates fed off of the
Tryouts are an athlete’s least desired activity, including my own. They make me fearful which ultimately developed through self-doubt. Doubt that I am not experienced enough, fast enough, or skilled enough. Yet, at the time of soccer tryouts, on Tuesday, July 28th, 2015, I felt none of these emotions. With my team’s prior success, we promoted to a higher level, overall boosting the morale of my team. As captain, players of my team unanimously voted that I would receive one of the 18 spots on the 2015-2016 team. Tryouts, the one critical factor, stood between that team and me. Transformation and triumph then came into my soccer career, but only after a period of failure.
Ever since I was young my parents said “Drew you should try new things, even if it means you fail at something.” I never really listen to them until one time in the study grade when I decided that it was ok to fail. I asked my parents “ Can we look for a club basketball team that I could try out for?” Thrilled in hearing that I wanted to try something new, they found I tryout for a team called the Cincinnati Royals. A couple of other friends agreed to try out with me, but I was still very nervous because it was my first tryout. All three of us made it through the first round of cuts and were called back for another tryout. I remember being more nervous for the second tryout than I was for the first. My palms sweated the whole night, every shot I took clanked of the rim, it wasn’t my night. My two other friends were told that they made the team, but I unfortunately got cut which I expected given how I performed. At first I saw this experience as an overwhelming failure, but I soon realized that I challenged myself, and I could learn from the criticism the coaches gave me. Taking the new stuff I learned from the tryout, I found a different club basketball team that I was fortunate enough to make, which I got to meet new people and play a sport that I loved. Although I may not have gotten the
I wanted to make sure I was not going to get cut in high school and made it a goal to make the high school team. During that summer I participated in a lot of basketball camps, including practicing and playing with the high school summer ball team and going to tournaments and getting a better experience and becoming more familiar with high school basketball. Tryouts were two days after my birthday, in November, and all I wanted was to do good and make the basketball team. Tryouts come around and i'm extremely nervous and the support of my friends was not helping me as much as it should have. High school tryouts were a little different than middle school, we would show off our handling skills, and then we would do shooting drills. Towards the end of tryouts we were split up into four teams and would scrimmage. I did everything that we had to do well and I was feeling very impressed with my performance. Choosing day comes around and I am feeling very confident but still nervous. He starts to call off names and thankfully he called off mine, and when he did the feeling I had was unforgettable, all the stress and disappointment from previous years of trying out had finally come to an end, and all the hard work that I put in finally paid off and I couldn't be anymore proud of
The day came and the whole way down to the tryout I was as scared as a turkey in November! The tryouts were at a school in Sioux city. As soon as I walked in the door, I smelled sweat and I wanted to leave. I started to sweat before I even started playing, I saw so many girls from 3rd to 11th grade. I didn't know where to even go so I walked to the middle of the court and that's when it began.
Ever since I was a little boy, about eight years old or so, I had an extreme passion for the sport of basketball. On weekends, I would wake up in the morning, eat a bowl of frosted flakes or cheerios, put on basketball shorts and then go in my driveway to shoot around. I would be out there for hours just shooting around or playing with some random kids that I would occasionally see walking around my neighborhood. This was satisfaction to me, but even better was playing on multiple public teams and not just playing in my driveway every day. In elementary school, I played in a recreational league, just like almost every other kid who tries out basketball when they were younger. This was fun and all but it was nothing too serious. There were never any practices, it was just one or two unorganized games per week. I never took
The sound filled the air. It almost made me forget my back was tired from sitting so upright in this uncomfortable wooden pew. As I watched, I found myself wondering how in the world someone can make their fingers move so quickly. Not to mention, her feet and fingers are moving at different rates. She completely fit the image of a concert pianist with her long, sequined red dress, red lipstick, and platinum blonde hair. She looked like she belonged in a grand concert hall, instead of on the stage of our small church.
It was just three weeks before our first game of the season against the Willow Springs Tigers. I was in the car with my father listening to the Pat Daily radio show like we always did on the way to football practice. Pat Daily was a high school sports analyst, he just so happened to be talking about the Reeds Spring Wolves’ season and who the fans could lookout for. One line in his show happened to be about me. Pat said, “We will have a sophomore this season at 6 feet, 245 pounds, Tristan Beyer, who is going to be one of the players battling for a starting spot on the offensive line”. I was not going to think anything of it. It was my sophomore year of high school, I thought the whole world was ahead of me and I thought without a doubt I was going to start. I figured it was going to be my position to lose. I was doing so well in football and I knew it was going to be my year to start at center.
Ever since I was a small child, I have loved music. The strong, steady beats, the
Basketball is one of the interesting sports I have always wanted to engage myself even as a little child. It was a dream come true when I started playing basketball in my high school. Moreover, I was very good in it, and I became the team leader. Of course, I enjoyed every bite of the time I spent playing basketball. My participation in basketball, has had numerous effects on my life, and these are physical, personal and social.
It was the start of summer 2002, and the Mid America Youth Basketball (MAYB) national tournament was taking place in Andover, Kansas. Along with the rest of the team, I was excited to play some basketball for the first time since the middle school basketball season was over. Our team, Carlon Oil, had been together and played every summer for the last four years. We were a really good team, with an overall record of 65-4 over those four years and were hoping to continue our legacy. Lonnie Lollar, our coach for the summer, was also the coach of our high school basketball team. I had a history of groin injuries, and every summer it seemed that I would have to sit out at least a game on the bench icing my groin. But this summer was different, and I along with everyone in the gym wouldn't have expected my summer to end with a injury such as a broken leg.