Neelin Views — What I learned from four years of high school sports

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2018 (2942 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last month, I finished my final season with the Neelin Spartans varsity basketball team. For the first time in my high school years, our team won our interzone championship and reached provincials, where we won fifth following a hard one point loss to our first round competitor. Basketball has dominated my winter months for four straight years.

Now that it’s all over for me, I find myself looking back on the opportunities that I had to play and am incredibly thankful. While it was true that our team took time to develop, our final year was truly incredible and meaningful to every single player on the team. Throughout my time with this team, I learned a lot of important values. Not all of these values were solely applicable on the basketball court, and I believe that many of them will benefit me for many years to come.

In particular, basketball really helped me to learn a lot about how important teamwork is. Group work has been something that I have struggled with throughout my entire life. In terms of basketball, my concept of teamwork was definitely a little off for some of the years that I played on the team.

In sports, students are often given the mindset that only the best will prevail, and that you should therefore be in a constant state of competition with the same people that you’re supposed to be working towards a common goal with. Some amount of competition is fine, especially in practice as it helps your teammates get better. However, you can’t be worried about competing with your teammates on the actual court.

At the end of the day, everyone on the team has to work together in order for them to get anywhere. If any of the players are too concerned with awards or their own achievements then the team can’t be as successful as it would be. Sometimes, players have to look at the greater good and put their own interests aside in order to help the entire team.

Teammates have disagreements too. But on the court, these disagreements can’t mean anything, or else you’re just bringing down the team. Overall, this year, and the success that we had really taught me that being successful means that you have to be a team, not just a group of people with their own interests.

Playing basketball also gave me a sense of responsibility and commitment throughout my high school years. When you play on a high school team it very quickly becomes a lot of responsibility, as there is a requirement to attend practices that often isn’t there in junior high. Especially in the older years, you are usually responsible for keeping track of your own schedule and often for getting yourself to practice on time. During the time that sports are active, it can become quite difficult to balance any homework or work with a sports schedule.

I really feel that basketball helped me with my commitment skills. Sometimes, basketball would be really hard because some of the girls that I hung out with who didn’t play sports would want to hang out, and I would have practice. As they didn’t play sports they never understood why I wouldn’t just ditch it. However, basketball really taught me that when you commit to something, you have to commit to all of it all the time, not just the parts you want, when you feel like it.

Throughout my life, I’ve discontinued a lot of activities, from bowling to guitar and volleyball. However, basketball is something that I never quit, no matter how difficult it got. This is a really valuable life lesson, as it carries through into real life. Even though things get difficult sometimes, or you may have a bad day, you can’t just quit. You may have a better day very soon, and if you quit you will miss out on many experiences. My organization was also improved, as I kept track of my own schedule and was admittedly quite terrified of missing any practices without justification.

Finally, I learned that there’s no sense doing something if it’s done poorly. A win isn’t a win if you haven’t put all of your effort in, even if you’re up an unnecessary amount. Even if a team is considered an easy win, you can still use the game against them to get better and prepare for future games, which may be much harder. In sports, you can learn something from every game, even if you won. You can always be looking at how you can be up that extra five points, or what tactics you could use against a different team. While losing is hard, you have to look past the fact that you lost and really realize why you lost. This way, you can be better in your next game, and hopefully beat the team next time you play them. However if you wallow in your loss and refuse to register what happened, you may never get better. This experience really shows that even when you fail, you can still learn from your failures so that you can be better prepared next time there is a similar situation.

Overall, high school sports definitely proved to be an invaluable experience for me. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities that I had to play, and am glad that I made the decision to make the commitment. Playing wasn’t always easy. However, at the end of the day, playing taught me a number of lessons that I don’t think I could have learned anywhere else in the school system.

» Alexandra Forsythe is a Grade 12 student at École secondaire Neelin High School.