Trasketball

As a kid I always loved team sports. If it wasn't football, basketball, maybe soccer, I probably wasn't interested. Then my sophomore year my basketball coach asked what I was doing in the spring, I told him nothing, because I didn't have a sport for the spring. He then informed me that I would be on the track team. This scared me. I had never participated in an individual sport before. It was a scary thought, that everyone would know exactly what I contributed or didn't contribute to the team. On a basketball court, sure they can tell you the number of points you scored, how many rebounds you got, steals, assists, even shooting percentages, but they can't measure your good off the ball defense, or how your post threat opens up your shooting guard for a three pointer. It was this sheild of uncertainty, the "yeah I only scored six points last game, but it was the intangibles that I really contributed to the team" that I could hide behind in team sports. Track you got up, threw your implement (a discus in my case) and they gave you a number as to how far it went. There was no defense. Nothing you couldn't measure. It was all numerical. Success was measured. Thats it. By the end of my senior year track was my favorite sport. I was the captain of the throwing team, and had finally mastered those pesky numbers that haunted me all throughout my basketball career. Never had I thought I would play an individual sport, much less track. I never thought I would say this (I wasn't particularly fond of my basketball coach) but here goes: Thank you coach Lipp.