For the Love of the Game

Blame it on the age, the muscle, the lift, the delayed reaction, the velocity of the game, the youthful sparks of the opponents, lady luck, referees but myself. It’s sad but I have to honestly and humbly admit it, this is not the way I played basketball 10 years ago as I watched our opponents left us flatfooted most of the times. Having scored couple of baskets, grabbed some rebounds, dished few assists and made just a single free throw out of the four attempts was a lowly consolation for the anguish of running up and down the court, gasping for every breath trying to defend the untiring varsity selection of STI College Naga and getting back in formation for our offensive set.

We were up against a mighty varsity selection team of STI for an exhibition basketball game in the opening ceremonies of our 2010 Sports Festival. The days of half-serious and half-attended practices were all intended to have a “respectable” showing in today's exhibition game. The pride in the youthful athletes inside of us refuses to yield to the elderly body that we now have. The dignity of winning a game in front of our home crowd and getting the better of our youthful counterparts is a dream still worth pursuing. Sad enough, after the first quarter bell rung, we all have to wake up to the reality of letting go of that elusive dream.

The united administrative staff and faculty members basketball team which I am part of have a decent chance of winning the game if it was played on a half court set. Defensively, we can contain the opponents’ scorers with our "clever" (read: gulang)defense set-up and we can attempt for a high percentage shots at will against the opponents’ defensive pattern, but we have NEVER contained their fastbreak attacks. We were left watching them from our front court as Lowell Palmiano, their Team Captain, threw baseball pitches to their running guards who in turn made scoring a basket looked so easy with no one from our team defending them.

Yes, we had several attempts on high percentage shots but the ball just won’t find the bottom of the net. Engr. Rey Kalaw would muscle (literally) himself inside the shaded lane for a better angle but the ball would just kiss the rim and bounce out. Engr. Jay Garchitorena’s money-making set shots would just rattle the rim but never fall down for a score. At times I was even forced to use the glass for a much precise bank shot but just the same, the ball would say hello to the rim but never say hi to the bottom of the basket.

Interestingly, the game today made me noticed a slight change in my standard physical and health restraints. Not once in any part of the game did I turn to my best friend, my asthma inhaler medication, to clear my air passage and stabilize my breathing. The practices we had and probably the adrenalin of the game kept my system hyped and that my entire bodily systems are again in sync to help me achieve the goal in mind, to be tough and competitive in the game that I so dearly adore. For the love of the game, I don’t mind losing. I’ll keep playing still until I find the ways to win again. “Winners are not born overnight”, that’s part of the line I delivered myself during the mandatory opening speech. To be a winner entails a certain degree of persistence, discipline and practice.