Best Game Ever
It was the last game of the season. Everyone was running and piling into the gym. This was supposed to be an easy game. That meant I was going to get to play for the first time all year. I don’t look like your typical basketball player. At seventeen I’m not quite five feet tall and still not one hundred pounds. I have played basketball my whole life, but when I got to high school all of the other kids had already had their growth spurt. Then there was me - small and skinny but I didn’t care, I loved the game.
The first half of the game came and went, and guess what? Still no playing time. The score was 96 to 36 and we were winning. That had to be enough of a lead for me to play right?
Just then I heard my name, “Smith, get out there.” I jumped up, threw off my warm-up jacket and went to tell the scorekeeper my number for the first time. I was finally getting to play in a game.
A few minutes into playing, this gigantic guy, I mean this guy was pushing 6’7’’, was charging at me to do a layup. I got scared, but stood straight up and tried to take the charge. It turned out I was a little bit too far under the hoop to stop him and he scored, but that’s not the bad part. As he was on his way down from his jump, his elbow hit me right in the nose. My nose started to bleed, but I really didn’t notice until the ref blew the whistle. I had blood on my jersey. I was devastated and had to come out of the game. The trainer came to look at my nose.
“Man, I have never seen anything like this,” he said.
I ended up having to go to the hospital because we couldn’t get my nose to stop bleeding. The doctor checked out my nose and I ended up breaking it. but I didn’t care at all. I got to play in my first game this season!