With the 2021 – 2022 basketball season soon upon us it’s not unusual to set expectations – at least in our minds if not publicly. The beginning of every season is often filled with optimism and the hope that all the work you put in – 48+ practice days, all the AAU games, The Holy Family tournament, the summer league games and fall league games – have prepared you to be as good as you can be when the games really count.

Now it’s time to enjoy it, to see what you have created as players and as a team. Not that the work is done - far from it. The work never ends. You have to work to maintain whatever gains who’ve made and work to be better still as your season moves on. You have to enjoy it all – the practices, the games, the wins and even the losses. The joy comes from all of it, the entire process.

In the course of a full season you are likely to experience a multitude of emotions. Hopefully you’ll experience the exhilaration of winning games, the feeling of knowing that you and your team played together and executed the game plan or the feeling of personally playing to the best of your ability. It’s likely you will also experience the feeling of frustration that comes when you fall short, personally or as a team. These are the times when you might question yourself or your abilities or wonder if your team is as good as you thought.

Though it might be hard to see, the joy of playing basketball comes from the entire experience. The beauty of a full season is that each practice and each game provides a new opportunity to create another experience. Back in the day, I remember reading thoughts from the philosopher, Kahil Gibran that stuck with me. I won’t bore you with the actual quote but to summarize Gibran said that we have to strike a balance between joy and sorrow. He believed that we cannot fully appreciate the happy moments of our lives without having experienced the difficult moments. Our “joy is connected to our sorrow and our sorrow is connected to our joy”. As Gibran said, the joy and the sorrow are inseparable.

Think back a few years to when you were first learning to play basketball. You wanted to be able to make shots but you were just learning. It was hard and frustrating. You probably failed way more than you succeeded. When you finally began to make shots in a game it felt good. If you made multiple shots it felt great. Sooner or later you had a game when you couldn’t make a shot – and it didn’t feel good. The same action that brought joy (making shots) could also bring sorrow (not making shots). A truly successful player embraces the entire process. She knows there will be good days and not so good days. What makes her feel good motivates her to get past feeling bad. She’s motivated to get better and re-create that good feeling.

A season will have both feel good times and not so good times. You might experience it as a player, as a team or both. If you have a game (or games) when you don’t perform to your expectations and you start to question your abilities try to remember that the opportunity to create another good feeling is just ahead – at the next practice, the next play or the next game. This is what drives us – the quest for that feeling. It doesn’t come by chance, it’s earned. It may take time but it’s out there waiting for you to bring together your effort, your focus and your positive mindset.

In that sense you are competing, not against other players and teams, but against yourself. The challenge is to push yourself through the obstacles towards your best effort and towards standards you set for yourself and your team. If you are “half in” you won’t reach your full potential. Being “all in” requires humility – knowing what you don’t know. Without humility you are hiding, protecting your image and limiting your growth as a player. When you can own the things you can improve on you are on the path towards your potential.

When you compete with yourself you can avoid the traps of playing down to weaker opponents or conceding to a team you perceive to be better than you. When you compete with yourself you control the effort you bring to each game. If it’s your best effort – really your best effort – and you meet the standards you set, you’ve won regardless of the score.

We encourage you to self-evaluate after each practice and game and honestly assess where you are as a player and a teammate. When you do, look at those areas where you fall short of your expectations as opportunities rather than failures. Remember that the range of emotions you feel during the season (feeling good about your play and being unhappy about your play) is just part of the improvement process. Players who perform at a high level are always improving.

When self-evaluating it’s also important to recognize all the different ways you can contribute to your team. There’s way too much emphasis put on scoring. The high scorer of a game may not be the most valuable player of that game. Coaches who understand basketball value the players who contribute in multiple ways. Players who defend, pass, rebound, handle the ball, hustle, grab the 50 / 50 balls and support teammates are essential to any winning team. Evaluate your play on all levels and acknowledge those things that you did well, and the things you hope to improve.

We wish you the best of luck with your high school, middle school and rec. seasons and we’re looking forward to watching live games again.

Bring your friends and neighbors out to support the Lady Vikes.