Hoops

Thursday night after class, Chel and I met at the SMU rec center. By the time we finished our workout, the frat guys had wrapped up their intramural basketball game, so I challenged Chelsea to shoot a few hoops with me.

It took me back to my days as the starting center for the Olney Cubs freshman basketball team, when my stat line looked something like this:

10 points, 2/5 free throws, 3 fouls, 0 assists, 5 rebounds

I should clarify that’s an estimate of my stats for my entire three-year basketball career, and that I became the starting center because we only had seven players on our team, I was the tallest, and the real starting center had to move to Georgia with his family the year before.

So quite surprisingly, I actually made a couple of my first few shots at the SMU gym but bricked the majority.

“Wow,” Chelsea said, “I’m learning something new about you! When is the last time you played?”

“Ah, ninth grade,” I replied proudly.

“Oh, so almost 20 years ago!”

I stopped dribbling. Could ninth grade really be that long ago? Indeed it could, which led to two feelings in that moment as I stood near the three-point line:

First, amazement that time goes by as fast as it does.

And second, gratitude that in that almost 20 years, I have been blessed to learn a lot, meet the love of my life, and get closer to discovering my calling. And to realize that my calling is not to become a professional basketball player.

“Wow, yeah, so 20 years ago,” I said as I bricked another shot. Proving once again that the more things change, the more my basketball skills stay the same.