(Continuing from Part 2: Rec Ball)
I never really knew how it felt to have your confidence crushed in a single minute until the very first day that I stepped foot into the cold, hardwood floor of the San Gabriel Matador Arena for basketball try-outs. I also never knew how it felt to have your self-esteem shattered and depleted right before your very eyes until I met Coach Chris Kwan.
Though these two things were particularly new experiences that I hoped to never come across, that seemingly harmless and humid day came in the summer of 2010 when both instances hit me...and hit me pretty hard.
Despite an awful season with the Rosemead Recreation team, I have to say that I was still pretty cocky and arrogant in that I thought that my individual skills were impeccable in comparison to the rest of the other young athletes that were trying out that evening. I had timidly gone through one try-out before and I was not going to let anyone step all over me again; I had worked on my shooting and overall scoring capabilities during the brief time following my promotion from Temple Intermediate School to prepare for the day and I felt better than ever.
Like any natural athlete would on the first day of try-outs or workouts, I quickly scoped out and sized up those who were trying to take "my" spot on the team. During the casual shoot-arounds prior to the start of the tryout, I paid attention to those who seemed quite experienced and began to think about the things that I would need to impress the coach the best that I could possibly do. Like every young and desperate athlete begging for a spot on the squad, I would later go on to make the mistake that everyone else made: I tried too hard to BE "that guy" on the offense, but I will get into that a bit later.
Anyways, as we were shooting around, showing off our forms and new kicks, a clean shaved 5'5'' Asian man comes into the gym from the side door. He is dressed in the typical shorts, generic Nike tennis shoes, and a plain solid colored t-shirt. He wears a little smirk on his face as he looks off every single player in the gym before gathering all the guys to huddle up. Seems reasonable enough, right? Well, that was what we all thought.
First of all, Coach Chris takes no bullshit. That is really the core of what he wanted to get off his chest right from the start. Secondly, Coach Chris needs everyone to work hard and work together,constantly. By the competitiveness expressed through the dirty looks and gestures that everyone gave one another once this was said, I knew that this was going to be a challenge. Third, do what Coach Chris says and he is happy, we are happy, and no body gets yelled at or told off. Fair enough. Lastly, nothing is personal.
Now that last one was pretty hard to swallow because of its vague implication of the type of discipline Coach Chris was all about. The first drill was supposed to be simple and because of its simplicity, everyone wanted to do it as quickly as possible which we would soon learn was not part of Coach Chris' five "basic" codes. All we had to do was jump stop and pivot with the foot that he indicates, either right or left. We were to perform four jump stops and pivots from the first free throw to the half court to the opposite free throw line and up to the baseline on the other side. I was up with the first batch of participants and in retrospect, I really wish I was not.
The simple drill came to a disaster and the inner Coach Chris was unleashed. When he said pivot left we went with our right foot and vice versa. He literally exploded, blasting out with all the insults that a 15 year old could possibly hear and he still was not done. He came up to my face and spit out that we all are horrible players and inquired that our former coaches had not taught us anything, I could not agree more.
After the disaster that was the pivot drill we went on to some shooting drills which did not turn out that well either. If your a young kid who is a huge fan of the NBA, you should really consider learning not to emulate anything that you see your favorite players do. We all know that the athletes in the NBA all shoot slightly side ways because, seriously, no one that plays in their caliber really squares up to the basket. Coach Chris was a very fundamental man and we pissed the crap out of him off when we all garnered our very best NBA shooting styles and impressions. The funny thing was I actually thought that I was doing a good job but in reality everything was just turning horribly wrong. And so the summer played out like this. We would all come into the arena with confidence and unwarranted arrogance before having it all taken away by the fire-breathing dragon that was Coach Chris and his verbal and heart-splitting attempts to gut us all alive.
I lost my confidence that summer and my offense soon faltered. I was not doing the things that I naturally felt comfortable with and began to do everything that Coach Chris wanted; the problem was I was not doing what he wanted right and for that, I became part of the bench mob. The guys that are simply on the team because you need at least ten guys to run practice. Every single practice was miserable and I was crawling into a shell. It was all terrible and it reached a point where I had actually wanted to go back to that free careless style of playing in middle school or better yet on the concrete floor of the outdoor courts.
The thing that made my freshman year on the team a bit better was the relationship that I got to develop with my teammates in a very unlikely but yet reasonable way if you think about it. We all hated each other in the first week but things changed when we found a common enemy in Coach Chris. We settled our differences and tried to push ourselves to survive each and every practice because everyone felt like quitting by the second or third week into pre-season. In all honesty, we were not a bad team but at the same time I do not think that any of us were playing basketball for the right reasons. We all played for the Coach and everyone was miserable. When we did things right, we were scolded for not doing them better and when we did things wrong, well that was something. This description fits into any great high school coach and in many ways Coach Chris was a passionate basketball coach who cared about the team and his job, but as freshmen, it was often hard to take his discipline for the better.
I think that we were scared to play for him because even when the bench got some seconds (yes, I said seconds) of playing time during the regular season, nobody wanted to step up. I remember the shivers that I got once he called my name to check into a game against Montebello, my feet did not want to budge.
Overall, the season ended in a 2-6 record in which I managed to play three minutes in a pre-season victory over Mountain View and a couple of 30-45 second games during actual season. Now with these numbers, it may seem like the whole season was a bust but it was not. Coach Chris made us all disciplined and given the fact that most of us did not quit the team, we really learned to persevere through though times in and out of the game of basketball.
Given the fact that I did not get much touches of in the offensive end, I lost much of my shot and did not have a naturally flow to my offense. At the same time, serving as a defender for the majority of our practices, I developed a liking to defending the best guys on the floor. You see defense can be played by anyone, it really is about one's effort and will to push and stay on your man. So I let out all my frustrations and tried to give the offense a tough time. If I could not play during the games and if I could not even play much offense during practice, why not help the team the best way I possibly could? The way saw it, I was helping them prepare for the games. I knew that other teams were quite aggressive on the defensive end especially the most elite in our Almont League such as Mark Keppel, our rivals. This was the best that I could do and fortunately my efforts on the defensive finally grabbed the attention of the other coaches, one of which was actually (and still is) San Gabriel's Varsity coach.
To Be Continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment