Although I still play college basketball, it is the strangest thing to go back to your high school and see everyone whose shoes you were in 3-4 years ago. It is a strange feeling because you remember being in their shoes and seeing players that had already graduated high school and gone on to play college basketball or just pursue a degree come back. It was odd because you remember thinking to yourself “Man that will be me in a few years,” and now look at me, I am going into my senior year of college already. I am the one looking in from the outside rather than looking out from the inside. It is just very strange experience.
Due to still playing college basketball, I often go back to my high school gym to get shots up, lift, and scrimmage with the current high school team. Each summer it gets stranger and stranger because each year the kids move up from junior high onto the high school team or juniors become seniors and what not. So now the kids that came to the basketball camps you would help run in high school are now the kids helping run the basketball camps and are no longer “kids” anymore but they have really grown up. This past year, the basketball players that were freshmen when I was a senior just graduated from high school and will be starting college themselves in the fall. It is just crazy how time flies right by you and you do not even notice it until you see those “kids” growing up into young adults and it just makes you feel old even if you are only 21.
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It is also feels very different going to watch the high school games rather than playing in them. When I first graduated from high school I came back to watch a couple games when I could, it is hard to come home especially when you yourself are in season, to see the girls I played with play. Now, anyone that I played with has gone and graduated. It is also weird not participating in the pregame rituals and seeing someone else playing in the jersey number that you wore for so many years. Unfortunately for me, my high school decided to build this awesome new basketball arena after I left so I will never get to play in it. Which from one point helps it not be so weird watching games because I never played in that gym but at the same time is so annoying because I will never get to play an actual game in that gym. Eventually the gym I grew up playing all those games in, spending all those countless hours shooting in, and going through some of the hardest and best times of my life, will be long gone. It is just a weird thing to think about.
You know exactly how the current high school players feel because you have been there. You know how it the anticipation of the season feels or what it is like minutes for playing against your rival team or the top team in the state. How great each win feels and how much each lose hurts. You know how exhausting it is to play in all those summer camps, playing back to back games multiple days in a row. You do not even realize it until you go back and witness how much everything has changed over the years.
So for those of you still playing, enjoy it. Do not take it for granted and appreciate each moment you have because eventually it will be gone and you cannot get it back. Become best friends with your teammates, build a good relationship with your coaches and learn what you can from all of them. Those people went through so many struggles and hard times with you. They will be a part of so many memories and probably a part of your life forever so appreciate them and the game. Time is short and passes so much faster than you think so remember that.
