Editor: Yeah, we’re still chasing that youth demographic. Plus, it’s a change from corpse eating hogs.
Crossover Dribble
Life Is a lot Like Basketball, the More You Learn the More Difficult It Seems.
by Thawit Nelson
I moved to US in the beginning of June. I didn’t know any English. The only word I knew was “Hello” or “Hi”. After about a week I started school. It was pretty difficult, because I didn’t know any English. I went to school about a month, and the last day of school was the twentieth of June. Where I live, which is up above the hill from Stillwater Store, I have two friends that played basketball who were my neighbors. They played for fun, and they wanted me to try. I tried to shoot, but the ball was hard to shoot.
At first, I dribbled the ball back and forward. But where I come from there is no such thing as basketball. It looked like a fun sport. Still, I didn’t know about basketball. The only thing I knew was that it was dribbling and shooting.
Summer 2011 I went camping with my parent. And everywhere I saw basketball courts. I started to play basketball on January 23, 2012. There were lots of people making fun of me when I started playing basketball. But I kept practicing and practicing until I felt like ‘I’m a lot better than the others that think they are good.’
I started to play a year ago, when I was thirteen, because I was adopted by then. The first day I moved here, I touched the ball. I didn’t know how to dribble or shoot the ball. A couple months later we went camping and every time I saw a basketball court, I asked my parents to let me play there. But I didn’t get a chance.
In the beginning of 2012 there was basketball activity at school and I started to play. I didn’t know how to shoot, layup, dribble. It seemed very hard. I was always the only one who got bullied. I was pretty upset. I never said anything to fight back because I was still learning the language. About 20 days later, I asked my parents for a basketball driveway hoop. And I kept practicing and practicing. Then I attended the NBC (National Basketball Camp), which was a good camp for me.
Knowing more basketball made it harder and harder. There are so many moves, fakes, layups, crossovers, and all kinds of footwork. Now, I’m 15 and trying to get up to speed so that I can play for the High School. But there are lots of players who started playing basketball when they were little. And some of them are big.
I hadn’t realized how hard being good would be. But each day I wake up and continuing trying. Just like Michael Jordan says, “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
Photo by Carl Nelson
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