Transcription
I can't remember if I joined the basketball team because my best friend did or to meet girls. Maybe both.
Looking back, I can't ever remember us winning a game. For a start we were all pretty short. Our opposition
usually towered over us. We tried to make up for our height disadvantage by jumping higher. It didn't work.
We practised for hours on long shots and penalties to give us an edge, but we still couldn't win.
Our worse game was against another local school quite near to where I lived at the time. Not only did we lose
by about 70 points to 8, but a guy who lived in my street was in the team that beat us and I had the added
embarrassment of seeing him regularly while walking the dog. To add insult to injury, a guy came into our
changing rooms at half time and beat up Mark, our star player and my best friend. If we'd had the guts we
would have fought back, all of us (after all, there was only one of him and 7 of us) but we were young and scared.
Despite our defeats we loved the game and had a lot of fun. We wore our team shirts with pride and occasionally,
only occasionally, we'd be winning and the crowd would be cheering. Our coach would be smiling from ear to ear
and all the girls would be looking at us. Occasionally.