Homework Dued 9/27

Kenneth Ngai
Freewrite/Blog post- 9/22/10
It was senior year and I was ready to make this year mine. I planned to spread my wings like the social butterfly that I know I can be. I felt like everything was going to fall in place this year. I was going to get into the college I really wanted to go to, get on varsity basketball and maybe even make some new friends.
I got one of my wishes; I was chosen to be a part of the varsity basketball team. I was really proud of myself like how my mom was when I could finally walk on my own. I was ready to show that I can play this game and that I wasn’t a “loser” in my mind. The first time I stepped on the court it was so surreal as if I was a major league baseball player being called up from the minor leagues. I had so many emotions going through. I was anxious to start practice. I was worried about how hard practice would be. I also felt tired due to the fact that it was 6:30am.
We had practice from Monday to Friday for about 4 weeks before the season started and we played a lot of practice games against other teams. During this span, my playing has been like of William Hung thinking he was a good singer. I was pretty much horrible for almost all of practices and games. I didn’t understand how I couldn’t understand how to run the plays for our team. There were so many plays and different variations of it. I had a sense; coach was getting a little irritated at me and my lack of understanding the offense. I was definitely trying as hard as I could but I felt bad for letting him down.
As the preseason came to the end, I was finally picked up the offensive and I was contributing to the team with some points but with the ability to set up my teammates. I was really feeling good about myself; however, tragedy would strike me the day before the season. I was doing some extra practice with my teammates to understand the offensive better. After we finished covering the offense, we decided to play a quick game. In the game I went up to block to try to block him, I didn’t. When I was landing back down, I landed on my right knee hard with a lot force and all I heard when I got to the ground was a very loud crack. I was in pain like a child getting his first cut.
I knew it was over. I was angry like a girlfriend telling her boyfriend that she thinks about him like a brother. I was sad that my season was going to be over when it was my first time being on a varsity team and that I couldn’t help my team anymore. I felt like I was so close to reaching what I wanted to do for my senior year. I felt frustration like a superstar trying to make his or her big comeback but failing every time. It just made me very unhappy and unaccomplished.
At the end of the day, the doctor told me I had cracked my meniscus disc in my right knee, which supports the weight being placed on the knee. This meant there was a piece of my disc floating around in my knee. There was a big risk that it could damage other areas of my knee. There was also ligament damage in my knee that needed to be repaired. I had surgery the day before Christmas and that was the day for any hope coming back to play was gone. Gone the feeling of playing in an official game was gone. Gone was the hope of scoring the game winning shot and feeling like a hero.