forgiving myself part 1

Sports have been a part of my life since I can remember. From the first hoops memory playing in church in the RA’s (royal ambassador) basketball league in elementary school all the way thru high school, sports pretty much dominated my life.

If I had a dollar for every time I hit a baseball or took a jump shot practicing I would no longer have to work for a living. My dad always had us practicing. It’s just what we did.

Unfortunately all that I had accomplished through high school came to an abrupt end. I have never been able to forgive myself for that. I will do my best to explain what that means.

Over the years I got to play Brazil, Japan, and many other cool countries in the select baseball world series. I also got to play hoops with some of the best players in the country while playing in some of the most prestigious tournaments.

It has been an on going battle since I graduated high school. Everything I worked on and all the hard hours of practicing were so that one day I could get an athletic scholarship to college. My parents didn’t have the ability to pay for college and getting an athletic scholarship was the only way to go.

While growing up sports were first, and sports were second. Unfortunately for me school work was never a priority or pushed by my parents. My freshman year I went to Eastern Hills High in funky town, East Ft. Worth, smack dab in the hood. When I was recruited to play hoops at Coppell High it was like jumping from high school to college academically. I was SOOO lost and behind. Not to mention the huge demographic change of being one of two white guys (brother #2) in the entire hoops program at Eastern Hills to only 5 blacks in the entire school at Coppell. I also struggled mightily with the female population since there were very few white girls at Eastern Hills.

I can’t tell you how many times my teachers passed me so I could play ball. It got to where I knew the teachers would pass me so I just floated thru classes. I was an office aid my senior year and I would write my own absent notes from my parents so I could skip anytime I wanted. I had the system down pat. I ended up missing over 25 classes and had to make them up in the summer just to graduate.

I had a rough time playing hoops at Coppell. My first year there I flunked Algebra 2 and couldn’t play until the second report card came out. My junior year I broke a bone in my right foot and had to have a screw inserted so I could play that season. I probably missed half the games we played my sophomore and junior year. I was still able to do my thing and get all the top awards from district and the region. I was always either offensive player of the year or MVP of the region. I was getting letters from USC, UT, Vanderbilt, and several D-1 schools. Considering your sophomore and junior year are when you are recruited the most I was very lucky and blessed. I am sure my mom has a box in the attic with all my letters and recruiting stuff. To this point it has been too painful to get them out and look at them. I used to hang certain ones on my wall so I would continue to work out and get better. It’s just too bad I didn’t take that work ethic in the classroom.

My senior season came to end in the playoffs and it was time to figure out what I was going to do and where I might go to school. I signed a letter of intent to play hoops and was well on my way to going to college. One thing I had to do was take the SAT. I had been putting it off because at that time I didn’t realize how important it was. I mean my senior year was almost halfway over and I hadn’t taken the SAT once. I hadn’t even taken a practice test or studied for it. Needless to say, I bombed it and scored so low I didn’t qualify to get an athletic scholarship. To be continued…….