Skip to content

Writes for all Mommies

Supporting you in motherhood, one little blog post at a time

  • About
  • The Eclectic Collection

Tag: middle school social hierarchy

motherhood

The Legend of a Basketball Manager

February 6, 2019 WFAM

I am finally ready to write about it.  It took some time and perspective, but here goes.

Moving is hard.  Moving changes everything.  Moving makes finding your way and where you fit in a challenge.

T.Puzzle hit the ground running.  He breezed into classes and cliques relatively unscathed.

Full Speed had a much different experience.

I never changed schools growing up so I am not sure what is typical of joining a school in your eighth grade year.  It seems that where we moved is well-established.  Most kids have grown up here and they stick together.  There are good kids to be found, but at the beginning of the year, Full Speed had a hard time connecting with them.

He ate lunch alone for over two months.

As fate would have it in the midst of his lone lunching, he tried out for basketball.  Tryouts ended in disaster as he suffered a mild (though frightening) concussion on the very first day.  Apparently two basketball passes to the head will do that to you.

We had some pretty dark days post-concussion.

Thankfully, we had access to excellent follow-up care.  Over the course of three months Full Speed successfully completed all physical therapy and passed all cognitive testing.

In the interim, he was offered the chance to be the basketball team manager.

This changed everything.

He quickly became the heart and soul of the team.  He started to get recognized at school.

He finally had friends to sit with at lunch.

This all culminated in him getting to suit up and participate in the final home game of the season.

IMG_6366
IMG_6371
IMG_6369

He played a few minutes here and there.  He showed some fire on defense and fed his teammates some passes.

As the clocked ticked down its final minute, he was subbed in.  The goal of the team was to feed him a shot.  Everyone was invested as they all cheered him on.

He never did make the shot, but he didn’t need to.

The winning happened the minute he stepped on the court.

He belonged.

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Print
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...
Tagged basketball manager, belonging, changing schools, concussion protocol, eating lunch alone, kids and sports, middle school social hierarchy, motherhood, moving1 Comment

Archives

Categories

  • bad day (27)
  • Chicago Cubs (8)
  • children (532)
  • dogs (16)
  • eyesight (37)
  • family (152)
  • good grief (15)
  • gratitude (176)
  • grief (9)
  • happiness (137)
  • Happy Holidays (1)
  • health (64)
  • humor (374)
  • inspiration (3)
  • kids (332)
  • kindergarten (16)
  • life in pictures (119)
  • loss of parent (23)
  • marital blissishness (32)
  • marriage (26)
  • mean mom (1)
  • mommy cliques (3)
  • mommyhood (462)
  • motherhood (464)
    • Writing (2)
  • Ohio State Football (1)
  • parenting (380)
  • potty training (17)
  • rock and a hard place (8)
  • self care (or lack thereof) (12)
  • self care? (1)
  • self-discovery (53)
  • self-image/self-acceptance (10)
  • South Africa (1)
  • surgery (11)
  • Taekwondo (10)
  • tantrums (29)
  • terrible threes (23)
  • terrible twos (14)
  • Uncategorized (14)
Blog at WordPress.com.
  • Follow Following
    • Writes for all Mommies
    • Join 438 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Writes for all Mommies
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: