How Basketball shaped me to be a LEADER

"Hard work outweighs talent every time."-Kobe Bryant

I have always been a huge sports fan growing up. Before getting into basketball, I was a big football fan. I loved watching Lionel Messi play week in and week out, and I also loved to analyze the game overall. Honestly, I was so mesmerized by Lionel Messi that he made me fall in love with football.

However, when it came down to playing, I found my true joy and happiness in playing basketball which was not the case in the beginning. Due to my skinny physique, people undermined me when it came to playing sports. I started believing the idea that I could not play sports gradually until one day when I joined my friends to play basketball during lunch. That was the time when I realized that basketball is fun to play. I immediately felt that I want to get better in this game by putting in the work everyday.

I started playing basketball everyday with my friends. Now, along with football I started watching basketball, and Kobe Bryant was the one whose game caught my attention. I used to watch old clips of Kobe Bryant because I loved his style of play and his flamboyance. His fadeaway move was a move that I wanted to add in my inventory and I practiced that move everyday in the basketball court near my house. I remember how happy I was when I scored a crucial bucket with the same fadeaway move during Sports Week of our school. We went on to be the first runner ups  that year. But I was happy about my progress from barely playing basketball to starting up in the team during the Sports Week.

This happened with in a span of one year when I was in 7th grade.During my 8th and 9th grade, I had the opportunity to participate in various Inter-School basketball tournaments. In my 9th grade, I captained my team to a victory which made me believe in my abilities as a leader. It taught me the value of growing together as a team. 

I carried on my passion with me in my junior and senior year of high school as well where I met new people and made new friends. I wanted to form a great basketball team from my class so that we could totally win all the tournaments organized with in our school. I took the lead and formed a team from my class.This was a new challenge for me since lot of people in my class were not very familiar with the game, but I accepted the challenge gracefully and organized weekly training sessions. I assessed the strengths of all my peers and we worked on improving their weaknesses. We played a lot of games with other teams where we tried our strategy and played as a solid team.

                                                                                                                

And finally when the day arrived where our hard work was going to be tested, we didn't back out. We entered the game as underdogs and completely shined on the tournament. It was a great moment for me as I led my team to a victory and all I could remember is how relieved I was that our hard work payed off. 

We also went on to win another competition while representing our class and made our class stand out in the school. 

I am grateful for all the moments basketball has provided me. This sport not only made me a leader, but also gave me the most challenging moments and tested my ability to perform under pressure. It made me a hard worker and helped me develop a never giving up attitude.