It was 7th grade. For the first time in my entire life, I made it through tryouts and got on my school’s basketball team. I was on cloud 9, even though I only made it by the skin of my teeth. Finally, I was on a team for the sport I love – yet I hated that year.
I barely made the team. I was the weakest player – the one the coach didn’t like, which gave free reign to everyone else on the team to bully me like there was no tomorrow. In their eyes, I was the one who had no business being around, and they made sure to make that very clear to me. Even though that entire year was miserable, I came back the next year, and continued playing into high school.
It was my freshman year of high school. For the first time, I was on a junior varsity team for basketball. Not only that, I became a starter. After hours of blood, sweat, and tears, I was a core member of the team, a player the coach felt he could depend on, an individual that the team respected. I knew what I was doing, so I had a right to tell people what they should do.
Then there’s the weakest player on our team. The coach is endlessly frustrated with him, my teammates hate him. Not a practice goes by that he doesn’t hear some harsh joke about his lack of skill or another reminder that he’s not wanted.
And I’m right there, joining the rest of the team in putting him down, making his time miserable in a sport he loved.
I became exactly what I hated in middle school. Those exact feelings of pain, anger, and shame I felt in middle school were feelings I was instilling in this player. I was no better than the members of the team I despised in 7th grade. I became the exact monster of spitefulness that haunted me.
Too little, too late I recognized my own hypocrisy. That player didn't bother showing up to tryouts during my junior year. Unlike me, he didn’t feel like taking all the abuse another year. Understandably so.
I contributed to destroying that young man's experience. What could he have become on the team if we had encouraged him? What contributions could he have made if he had come back and practiced more, with people giving him actual advice to help him get better?
I’ll never know. We weren't on a team together ever again.
