I consider myself to be many things. A Christian. A counselor. A wife. A daughter. A sister. A granddaughter. A friend. A lover of music. A writer. An introvert (and sometimes an extrovert). A critical thinker. A dog lover. The list goes on. We all wear different labels at different times depending on the role we are called to play, or the role we desire to have. One label that used to be a driving force in my life, a fairly big identifier of who I was for the majority of my childhood, was athlete. I still identify as an athlete today, it’s just not as dominant as it used to be because I’m not publically parading around in jerseys or playing in leagues anymore. I still take pride in physical fitness, and being an athlete is something I’ve always loved. Being athletic, coordinated, and driven just came naturally to me from a young age.
I tried many sports, as most children do, when I was finally old enough to start understanding the concept of team play and personal dedication to a task. I tried gymnastics, softball, swimming, horseback riding, and tennis. I even have a faint memory of being in a tap dancing class when I was REALLY young. But one sport surpassed them all when I finally tried my hand at it. And that sport was basketball. Nothing else held a candle to the passion that was ignited in my heart when I began to shoot, dribble, and play on a team. It was an immediate, instant connection to a desire that would burn inside me for years to come.
My first memories of playing basketball are tied to the YMCA youth recreational team where I began playing around 7-8 years old. It was a short season and all you had to do was sign up. There were no cuts because everyone got to play. Our teams were divided by solid colors, and I remember my team name was Power and we all had bright, red t-shirts. It was nothing fancy, but I already had a sense of pride for my team. I was so proud of that red shirt, I wore it to my first day of middle school where I would be meeting about 1,000 new kids. Looking back, that was a horrible decision in more ways than one! Fashion suicide on day one of junior high! That’s another blog for another day 🙂
I’m sure it was pretty hysterical to watch these little “thrown together teams” run up and down a court with little structure. There were no plays and no real serious coordination of events. Some girls on my team had zero interest in being there, but they were forced to show up because their parents were trying to expose them to “a wide variety of activities.” Not me though. I showed up to play as hard as Richard Simmons goes at a work out routine. I was excited! I loved it! I could eat, sleep, and breathe being on that court running drills and practicing all day. I felt like I had found my niche, and a dream was unfolding before my eyes. A dream I could chase, run after, and pursue because it made me feel alive inside.
Soon after I became involved in recreational league play, I yearned for more. I began begging my parents to be a part of something where I could play basketball all the time. My parents decided to get me my first basketball goal for our driveway towards the end of elementary school to see how serious I was about my dedication to the sport. It was a standard goal, but it had that hard, plastic backboard that didn’t quite make it a “legit” hoop. But as soon as we put it together, I went to work. Playing all hours of the day during the summer. Staying outside at night with the porch lights on trying to still make out the outline of the rim to sink shots in the dark. The dream was real and I couldn’t stop playing.
With my new found love of the game, and constant desire to play, I tried out for my middle school basketball team in the 6th grade, and was one of only 5 girls who made the team. Man was I on cloud 9! I was a shrimp compared to the 8th graders, but I was beaming with pride that I made the cut! From there, I went on to play travel ball every spring and summer, as well as started dedicating myself to the gym in the off seasons. At 13, I became involved with a training program called U-Turn where I learned how to lift weights, run drills, work on agility, increase my vertical leap, perfect my shot, and incorporate bible study devotions into each practice to coincide with my calling to play basketball. This was my definition of living the dream. Getting up everyday, pursuing my passion with everything I had, and pushing myself to the limit to be the best player I could be. My parents eventually replaced my kiddie hoop in the driveway with the real deal! I’m talking a plexiglass backboard and adjustability to the standard height of 10 feet. I was ecstatic and they were taking me seriously!
As time moved on, I eventually graduated to high school where I played my freshman year on the junior varsity team. Our team went 14 wins that year undefeated before we lost our first game, and by the end of that year, the coach from the varsity team was letting me dress out for games with the varsity players. I was well on my way to play varsity for my sophomore year, and I was so excited I couldn’t stand it! This dream of mine to be an amazing basketball player that started 7 years prior to this was unfolding before my eyes, and it was so close, I could taste it.
But something happened. Something changed that I wasn’t prepared for. I never saw this situation coming, but when it arrived, it was so forceful it changed the course of history. The course of MY history.
A new girl. A girl who transferred to my school from a state away who was in my grade. Who played my position. A girl with an agenda. A girl who would change my world. Rumors were already swirling at the beginning of the school year of this girl and that she played basketball…
Tryouts came my sophomore year. Girls were divided out into two separate groups based on grade level and/or talent. The new girl went to the varsity side of the gym, and I was pushed towards the JV side of the gym. My body became hot. My heart rate went up so fast I could feel it pulsing in my ears. Tears welled in my eyes that were so hot, they burned as I tried to hold them back. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t breathe. What was happening? Who was this girl and how did she already have a connection to the varsity team when she hasn’t even been here? I had already been dressing for varsity the year before, but somehow was being relegated to the “lesser” team. I became frozen in my frustration and literally didn’t know what to do.
I immediately felt sick. Stuck. I attempted to talk to some of the coaches about it, but it was like my words were falling on deaf ears. It seemed that this decision was permanent and I became consumed with this intense hurt, rage, bitterness, fear, jealousy, and bewilderment. Despite all of those feelings, there was one that took the cake. I even hesitate to admit it, but it was real and it was raw. Hatred. I hated her. I had never felt a hate like this before for someone I had never met and didn’t really know. But it was all-consuming and drove everything inside of me like a train. I hated her with every fiber of my being and I didn’t care who knew.
I’d love to tell you that she was some all-star player who should have had that spot on that team. I’d love to tell you her shooting accuracy was 80%. I’d love to tell you she was some amazon player who was 5’10 and full of muscle. I’d love to tell you her place on the team was justified and she was the fastest, strongest, and best defensive player they had. That would have at least made it convincible for me to believe she deserved it. That would have at least helped me let go of this position I had been working my butt off for, for years. But she wasn’t any of those things. She was average. She was an ok ball player who claimed she played varsity where she went to school previously, and that’s why she deserved that spot on that team. And that’s what stung the most. In my brain, I couldn’t rationalize this decision. But it was made. It was done.
I fell into a deep depression. I felt like I lost my sense of purpose. What if everything I had worked for over the past 7 years was all for nothing? It was a gut-wrenching slap in the face every day that I had to show up at school and sit in the same classes as her. Practice in the same gym as her. Dress out on game days in different uniforms than her. Have her sit with the varsity team in the bleachers watching me play with the JV team while she got to wear her letters. Having to smile and entertain her when both teams got together for socials or tournaments. I hated her so badly and nothing seemed to make things any better.
I feel like the worst part of this whole situation wasn’t even related to basketball. One of my best friends I had started playing ball with in 6th grade made varsity basketball as a Freshman. She was someone I connected with immediately when we met in middle school, and she was someone I loved hanging out with. For some reason, this new girl targeted our friendship and despised the fact that we were friends at all, much less best friends. I have a vivid memory of us doing warm ups in practice one day when both teams were practicing together. My best friend and I were cutting up and laughing, and this girl came over in between us and demanded we stop speaking to each other because she didn’t like it. Instances like that made my blood bubble up even more with the hatred I had towards her. Looking back, I just took it. I didn’t respond because I didn’t know how. I don’t know if it was shock that made me so unable to respond to her. Maybe it was insecurity. Maybe it was the hate that made me so crippled that I couldn’t fight back. Maybe it was that I felt inferior to her and I just couldn’t muster up the strength to hold my own. So many instances like that came up, and I just let her do it to me. Over and over again.
I wish I could tell you that this season of my life ended like a Rocky movie. That I dug down deep inside of myself and whooped her ass and took my spot back on the team. Or that I powered through and got some sweet revenge and made her look like an idiot. The truth is, I didn’t.
I played my junior year on the varsity team with the girl I hated, and a new coaching staff because our high school’s varsity head coach quit. The new coaches knew nothing about this situation I felt I had been robbed of, and quite frankly, they didn’t care. They played who they thought should play and that was it. We had an overwhelmingly losing season that was just as depressing as the way my insides felt, and I rode the bench. I didn’t get to play because I wasn’t on the varsity roster from the year before which is what these new coaches went off of. No one cared that I was the highest scoring player on my team from my sophomore year and no one cared I got MVP of the season. It killed me. My passion was gone. The little pilot light of hope inside of me that I barely had burning got snuffed out. The hurt reached such dark corners of my soul that I began to hate the game.
My senior year rolled around. The pinnacle of all dreams of student athletes as their year to shine. Their year to possibly be scouted for college. Their year to leave it all out on the floor for their team and their school. All of the anticipations of my childhood getting wrapped up into one final shot to make it count and live in the glory of going out on top. All of those years of hard work and dreams were on the line.
And I quit. I walked up to my coach, the new coach who had only known me for a season. I caught her before classes began one morning in the main hallway of my school and blurted out the statement, “Hey coach, I just wanted to let you know I’ve decided not to play this year.”
Her response? “Ok good luck to you.”
That was it? Good luck to you? I’m not sure what I expected her response to be, but it sure wasn’t that. She didn’t even ask me why. She didn’t even try to have one of those “coachy” pep-talks with me. I told her I was leaving and she just let me go.
I remember walking down the hallway with those words hanging over my head and feeling a lump well up in my throat because I knew it was over. It was really over. I let my childhood dream die.
There were months after I quit where I experienced moments that still brought me to my knees when I least expected it. Being known as an athlete all my life and not dressing out for game days when the rest of the team did hit me like a ton of bricks. I can still picture where I was in my high school gym when I attended the game that happened to be senior night. I was standing in the bleachers with my friends (which was so not like me because I was usually on the court) and watched all of the seniors get escorted out by their parents, recognized, and handed roses. Still, the hatred I had for that girl seethed out of me in those moments because I was watching her get recognition for something that should have been mine. I read articles in the paper about the weekend recaps of all the high school games, and my name wasn’t in there. I felt sick when I realized someone else wore my number.
These memories are painful. And I get emotional just writing this because it’s the first time in 10 years I’ve actually gone back and re-lived some of these moments in such detail. No amount of wishing can ever allow me to get those decisions back, and if I let myself go back to that place too far, the weight of regret swallows me like a wave.
I can’t change the past. And Lord knows sometimes I wish I could. But since I can’t, I have to be able to use my past as a catalyst to impact my future. The whole point of me sharing this personal struggle is because someone else reading this has a past regret they wish they had handled differently, or a current struggle they don’t know how to get out of. There might be some magical formula out there with a step-by-step process of how to make better decisions. I’m sure there’s an entire book being published right now on how to push through obstacles in your life. You may even be having conversations with those you love right now about feeling like giving up, feeling stuck, or not knowing a way out of your circumstances. I’ll tell you in the simplest form right now of why I let my dream slip away and my passion die. I’ll tell you what I learned from it and how I won’t make these mistakes in the future. It comes down to one principle…
I didn’t have enough grit. The question you need to be asking yourself is this moment is, “Where’s My Grit?”
Grit. What is grit? Grit is defined as one of two things: 1. small, loose particles of stone or sand. 2. Courage and resolve; strength of character.
Have you ever heard anyone say the phrase “the world is your oyster?” Have you ever stopped to consider what that means? If you haven’t, think about an oyster and what it does. Besides existing in the sea, the oyster takes grains of sand (grit) from the ocean, and over time, creates a beautiful pearl.
What is the thing in your life that is bringing you down? What’s the circumstance that is making your soul ache right now that you wish you could avoid? What is that situation from your past that makes you feel like you failed?
Whatever it is, use it to start producing a pearl in your life. Nothing you go through is in vain. We can use circumstances in our lives as a way to play the victim role and become a martyr. We can use resistance we experience in our lives as an excuse to lay down and retreat. We can ultimately allow painful things to keep us stuck in a gloomy fog that transcends all of our future experiences.
The truth is, everything I wrote about in my experience of having a dream die was real and one of the most painful experiences of my life. I had no control over what was going to happen to me as far as my circumstances changing. I couldn’t control this girl moving to my state, to my school, to my grade, and to my basketball team. I couldn’t control her hatefulness towards me. I couldn’t control my new coaches and their plans for who they wanted to play.
But I had complete control over me. In a time that felt so out of control, I had more power than I gave myself credit for. I had more strength that I could have tapped into if I tried. I had more confidence than I ever dreamed I could possibly hold if I only believed it. But the problem was, I didn’t believe I was worth it. I didn’t believe I could overcome this, so I didn’t. Instead of letting all the thoughts of rage, hate, insecurity, hurt, doubt, and bitterness consume me, I could have used this challenge as a way to focus deeper on my abilities as an athlete. Run faster, train harder, shoot more shots, study my plays until I had each one memorized, and work so hard on being a better me that nothing else got in the way.
If I ever do a doctoral program where I have to write a thesis and prove a dissertation, it will be on the factors of resiliency. I really don’t know what makes someone resilient and someone else passive. I don’t know how you instill resiliency in someone who doesn’t want to get better. As a counselor, that is so frustrating because sometimes, people just don’t want to do what they need to do to get better. I don’t know how to get that point across for someone else. I can speak for me though, and tell you that once you decide you want something, and you’ve had enough suffering, nothing else stands in the way of what you want.
Make the decision today that you’re done making excuses. Decide today that you’re worth fighting for and no one else can stand in your way of what you want. Don’t take no for an answer and keep pushing forward for whatever goal you have. BELIVE in yourself and don’t take push backs from anyone. It might be an exercise goal, diet goal, career goal, relationship goal, or traveling goal. It doesn’t matter what the goal is, just do it.
I’ve gone to the gym for years and in the past few years, I’ve started participating in group fitness classes. They are really hard and they don’t ever seem to get easier even when I am consistent in attending. Somedays I hate them. Some days I don’t want to show up. Some days my workouts just suck. But when it’s really hard to do one more push up, one more squat, one more burpee, one more tuck jump, one more jumping jack, one more lunge, I make the decision to keep going.
The biggest hurdle you will ever have in your whole life is the one in your mind. Oh, the things you could accomplish if you only told yourself in your mind you could do it. And not just telling yourself you can do it when you feel good. Telling yourself you can push through something when you’re broken, tired, overwhelmed, or about to give up is when it truly matters. I don’t really believe the statement that “you can do anything you set your mind to” because I’ll never be 7 feet tall with the ability to play in the NBA even if that was my biggest dream. But when it comes to strength of character, believing that I’m worth having what I work for, and never letting the evil people in the world get me down, that’s something I can hang my hat on.
I don’t hate that girl who moved to my school and took my spot on the basketball team anymore. I don’t allow her to make me bitter or fuel my heart and memories with regret. The truth is, I was a 15 year old kid who was blindsided with an unimaginable situation, and I did the best I could at that time with the tools I had. Sure, I wish I had the crown of glory, the MVP status, the varsity letters, and school record stats that would have retired my jersey in the high school gym. But it didn’t happen that way.
I learned a much more valuable lesson that impacted my future for the rest of my life. I’ll never let anyone else determine my worth and value. I’ll never let circumstances rattle me like that again to the point of defeat. I’ll be much more aware of my own inner strength and determination to fight for what is mine in this world, and not be afraid to speak up for what I want. Ultimately, I will continue to tap into my own personal grit that I found through heartache and loss to fuel me to overcome the next circumstances in life I can’t see coming yet. I hope you will too.
Be blessed,
Maggie
MaggieRigdon 