For the past week, myself and sixteen other Lower Merion students have undergone the rigorous and strenuous process known as basketball tryouts. As I sit here reflecting on the amount of hours my teammates and I have put in, it is astonishing to think that only a short period of time has passed.
photo By Noah Zuares/Staff
Starting on November 20th, 21 players arrived at Villanova’s athletic and training center known as “The Davis Center.” Upon entering the building, I could feel the nervous and excited energy that loomed over the large gym, home to a college basketball powerhouse. Every member attending the tryout took a leap of faith, or more precisely, one step. We were told that once each of us was in the proper mindset, should we take to the floor. An eerie, yet somewhat comforting silence fell over the gym as each person walked over an imaginary line and into “game mode.”
From there, things erupted. Spirit and encouragement replaced wobbly nerves and fearful thoughts. Yelling and screaming for every made lay up or successful three-pointer was the norm—passion had replaced anxiety. For many of us, this was countless hours of repressed hard work and practice over the summer and in the preseason emerging from its hiding place in an almost purely emotional form. However, this was merely the first three-hour segment of many. The next two days it seemed as though many of us were trying our best to recreate that feeling of intensity, but it just could not be done. We all still played hard, but the emotional high had slightly faded. By the third or fourth day, it was evident that our bodies had begun to feel the affects of the grueling process. Arbitrary comments such as my “knee is killing me,” or “I’m so sore,” made me realize how hard we were playing. Yet, we continued to push ourselves, because everyone in the gym wanted a jersey for themselves and their name on the roster upon the completion of the week.
Just as I felt I had reached my breaking point, things started to become easier. Not because of the content of the practice, but because I had gotten over the hump. The charged emotions of the first couple days along with our lack of regularity and familiarity with these lengthy periods had faded, and things started to become routine.
Once we returned to our home court at Bala Cynwyd Middle School, tryouts became much more X’s and O’s oriented. Scrimmaging and freelance basketball took a back seat to perfecting the offense, and working out the kinks in our defense.
All of our hard work was cultivated with a tri-scrimmage involving us, the Friends Central School, and Roman Catholic High School (some of the best competition in the state). This scrimmage was a gauge for how far we had come in a short amount of time. The entire team, with people still fighting for spots, as well as fighting for pride, traveled to St. Joes University with a chip on their shoulder and played these two perennial powers with hardnosed defense and determination. Being able to hang with teams of that caliber made it completely worth it for the tiresome events of the previous week.
As I sit here reflecting on the previous weeks, the aches and bruises I have collected are not what matter to me, but the pride of knowing that just completing this task is something truly special, and I am pretty sure my teammates feel the same way. As I wait for list to go up revealing the final roster, it is nice to feel as though I have accomplished so much already.
Mike Buckwald
Class of 2011
