Ballin’ for a Purpose

I have been playing basketball since I was four year old. I played all throughout middle school, as well as high school. Basketball has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, except now at Holy Cross. I wasn’t big, fast, strong, and (probably) talented enough to play for the varsity team here, so as a result I am left without playing organized basketball for the first time in 15 years of my life (*tear*).

So instead of wallowing in my “glory days,” of my “infamous” basketball career, (notice the sarcasm inbetween the quotation marks) 2 of my friends an I played in a 3 on 3 tournament last Sunday night. The tournament was sponsored by Holy Cross’  Beverly Connection. The Beverly Connection is an organization established in 2008 that helps raise money and awareness for the Beverly School in Kenya. Since 2008 various fundraisers have been hosted by students at  Holy Cross to raise money for the school.

So when Sunday night rolled around, my friends and I made our way to the fieldhouse for the start of the tournament. After a half hour of warming up, followed by 15 minutes of standing around awkwardly in the field house, we were told the rules as well as who we were playing. Our first game was against a team who had a player who was helping organize the tournament, so we knew the game would not be easy. Since the tournament format was single elimination, the games were all extremely competitive.

After succumbing an early lead, the shooting of my friend Brian led us back into the game. He hit 4 3-pointers in a row to give us the lead. Then after a loose ball recovered by yours truly, I recovered, set my feet and hit the game winning shot just shy of the 3-point line.  Ok, so it wasn’t as dramatic but still. It felt good to get the first one.

In the second game, we fell behind again. And once again Brian salvaged our team by hitting 4 more 3-pointers (his back must have hurt by the end of the game for figuritively “carrying” my friend Jon and I). Once again I stepped up again and hit the game winning shot.

Are we sensing a theme here?

Our third game played was the semi-final game and it was against the crew team. Coming from a smaller public school, I never saw what type of “men” were on the crew team. Any conceptions of them being scrawny and thin is entirely false. The game looked alot like this. We were just outmatched by these guys who were a whole head taller than us, not to mention having at least 20 pounds on all of us. Game over.

After suffering the treacherous defeat, I knew the event was well worth it. I got to lace up the high-tops and play basketball again, but most of all simple fundraisers sponsored by Holy Cross students, like a 3 on 3 basketball tournament, allow less fortunate kids in Kenya to go to school.

Enjoy the rest of your week. I’ll be back next week!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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