(Continued from Part Six: When It Hits)
The departure of Coach Tri left a lot of question marks pertaining to where next season would hold. I was now a junior with a better mindset for the game and really had a lot of potential. I knew this because Coach Jay began to place me in many more workouts with the varsity squad which was supposed to make me quite happy but it did not.
I noticed that although Coach Jay was generous with minutes when it comes to the Summer League, he was not so enthusiastic about giving equal playing time during the regular season. He was also a coach that was not a big fan of substitutions and giving his starting five much breathers. As a junior entering into a squad primarily dominated and filled out by seniors, I might as well find my favorite seat on the sidelines to enjoy the show.
However, I decided to keep quite and stick with the varsity squad going into my second Summer League under Coach Jay's playbook. I guess I was hoping that playing the Summer League would allow Coach to give me a chance; he would be able to see my game and how much it has grown from the previous year which followed my very unproductive freshman year. Coach Jay gave me the opportunity to improve last season and gave Coach Tri a good word about the defense that I was very capable of playing. He put me on the map and gave me the chance to play and I was grateful for that. I was hoping that this summer would be the "reboot part 2" or something. Well, long story short, it was not.
With much more players getting entering their senior years, Coach Jay played most of the guys that would probably be at the receiving end of the minutes during the regular season as the younger guys who just finished a year in Junior Varsity would all watch from the sidelines for the majority of the games. I get Coach's decisions and in retrospect, I do not blame him for not giving the younger guys more opportunities; it was only logical for him to work on the guys that he has been working with for three years rather than players whom he has only seen for two years during the summer. But if this was the case, why not let us work out with a separate JV squad, why drag us all along the ride?
We were all told that practicing with Varsity would only build our strengths and that if we could surpass the effort of the Varsity players, perhaps we could earn a spot on the starting lineup of the best team in the San Gabriel High School Basketball program. We all knew that this was a bit far-fetched but we all had wide eyes and felt that perhaps there was nothing that could possibly hurt our game. I do not know about the other Junior Varsity players but for me, it all hurt my confidence.
During the Summer League, I did not perform anything close to the "improved player" that I was supposed to be. When I did check in, I could not do much with the time that I had on the floor. I played about five to eight minutes a game and simply guarded my assigned player, occasionally received the ball only to pass it back out, and that was it. There were no points scored, not much rebounds, occasionally a foul or turnover, and nothing else. To me, the Summer League ended quickly and in a whirl but I knew one thing for sure, I was seriously hoping to not make the Varsity team.
A lot of people do not understand the hardship it is to be in a Varsity team just to be in a Varsity team. As a member of Coach Tri's JV team, we would occasionally catch some of the Varsity games which were obviously played during the "prime-time" or 7:00 slot following our games. During these games, I get to see the anguish in the eyes of the players who basically sit on the bench and do not play a single minute in contest. I knew that feeling, I felt it first hand during my Freshman year and I was not about to go back to that, not after all that I had done to get to the status as a role player during the last campaign I was in.
I knew that Coach Jay wanted me to be a part of his Varsity squad. He liked my defense but I knew he did not trust my offense enough to allow me to play during the season. I saw this and I recognized this during the Summer League. He would put me in to guard the point guard for awhile, get the opposing players to get weary and when they were, I would be subbed back out. If that was my role during the Summer, if five to eight minutes were considered generous, then I knew that my role in Varsity would be a practice defender; to lay all my heart out to guard Phillip Ly, the current starting Varsity Point Guard at the time.
But I felt like I was worth more than just a practice player, I wanted to play basketball because that was what I had joined for in the first place. I knew my role and I knew my limitations as a player, but I felt good enough to play solid and consistent minutes that would not be available in the Varsity team. So as many of my teammates worked on in hope of earning a spot on the Varsity, I tried to think of ways to tell Coach Jay that I wanted to stay in JV.
This was surely going to be the hardest part. How can you possibly tell a coach, a coach who has seen potential in you for quite some time, that you want to stay on JV when you seriously may have a spot on Varsity? It was hard and unfortunately, I never told him.
I told one of the players on the Varsity team and during a drill which I had botched, the player had spilled the beans. He told coach, "He doesn't even want to be on Varsity, he wants time to improve on JV."
I still cringe at the memory of the moment when Coach J just bluntly looks of and tells me to go over to the other end of the court where the JV was practicing. He did not say a single word more. From that day on, I practiced with the JV team, always looking over at the Varsity end and thinking about the decision that I had made. It hurt at times but I knew that I had no real future with the Varsity team at that particular time. Now that I was in JV, I knew that when the moment came where I was ready to play for the Varsity squad, opportunities may not be as plentiful. I knew that Coach Jay would likely trust the other players in my class because they had stuck with him but if, for just one more year, I got to play basketball as an intricate part of the JV team, it would be all worth it, including the sacrifice of my spot on Varsity.
At the moment, I guess I just wanted to play basketball and JV would give me the opportunity to start. Looking back, I have no regrets about my decision to stay on JV, although I always beat myself up for not telling Coach Jay myself. I was scared, afraid, and not brave enough to approach him on my own, to let down a coach that had done so much for me.
But what was more important at the time was getting to know my younger teammates and what the course of the upcoming season would look like. I was the veteran on the team and I needed to bring my A-game. We were still coachless at the moment but we had a few weeks to get prepared, nevertheless. I got to work.
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