(continued from Part Five: Run.)
If you ever got to eat the best ice cream you have eaten in decades, you would likely tend to have an instant urge to savor the moment, holding the rich vanilla as long as you can before you allow it to reach your stomach. Franklin was the ice-cream and it felt so good to just hold onto for as long as I possibly could.
On the way home, I had to pinch myself to validate that the events that had occurred just a few minutes ago. It was all too surreal. I relived every moment of that game: the first clean mid-range jump shot followed by the second one, the steal that lead to two free throws, the charge. My thoughts were all mixed and jumbled up but it did not matter, it all felt great and exhilarating. If only it would hold on.
The next few games were decent but nothing ever matched up with the game against Franklin. My production was average, nothing really spectacular. In terms of my offense, well, let's just say eight points was the highest I would ever get. As my numbers began to drop, I became a player that virtually had no significant numbers on the floor; I was simply occupying space and nothing really showed up in the books.
Given the fact that anyone could possibly do what I was doing on the offensive end, I lost more and more playing time as the pre-season rolled along. I found that Coach Tri was only putting me in the games simply because I was not necessarily doing anything wrong either. I was just playing basketball.
The struggle to find relevant playing time truly began once the season kicked-off. Some of my other teammates had gotten the nod because they were able to score and play decent defense. This is when I realized that great defense on a high school level really was not anything close to having a consistent offensive game.
Soon enough, I had reached a point where I would be fortunate to play eight minutes a game...but I accepted it. There were great points during the season, times when I felt like another Franklin game was in the making but the momentum can only carry on for so long. Nonetheless, I think that the camaraderie that our teammates shared was something that was seriously missing the prior season. Under Coach Chris, we shared a sort of survivor's mentality where we worked together because we all had a common goal: to not piss off the coach and subsequently run suicides. However, this season was quite different in that we all basked in our friendship and support. I did care about the decrease in my time but it helped to know that my teammates were more than capable of performing well and I felt as though everyone who got playing time honestly deserved it.
We went on to have yet another poor season but much more pros came out of it than cons. We were all happy and our bond together was impeccable. I had no regrets for staying on the team because of the type of year we had.
Coach Tri left San Gabriel the following season, which really hurt our entire unit. He was a young coach that had the ability to seriously understand what we were going through and it was hard to see him go. The departure of our coach only left much more question marks pertaining to the future of our program, something that we had grown quite accustomed to sense day one...
To Be Continued...
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