Shawn Jr. Makes Heath Varsity Basketball Team

Shawn Jr. has always been a strong basketball player. However, his real love is baseball. Because baseball and basketball conflict, going into his freshman year at Heath High School, he was only going to play baseball. First the first time ever, Misty and I strong encouraged / made him play a sport he did not want to play. We told him he needed to play basketball his freshman year just to see how it goes. He was not happy because he knew it would conflict with baseball at the end of basketball season. He was a unsure how that would go over with the baseball coaches and wanted to make sure he had ever opportunity to do well in baseball. Furthermore, he had not participated in basketball activities all summer. Therefore, none of the high school basketball coaches really knew him and he was certainly rusty. The first few practices, it really showed. He was out of shape and his timing was off. For the first month and a half the coaches had him playing with the Freshman team. He was frustrated because he thought he deserved to play on the JV team. Every day after basketball practice he would come home complaining. However, then they started scrimmaging. When they did, Shawn did really well. He was moved to the JV team. By the time they started playing games, he was starting on the JV team. During their first tournament he played great. They won the tournament and he had 3 really good games. He had established himself as one of the best players on the JV team. Last week he was asked to sit the bench in a varsity game. He did and actually got it for about 3 minutes at the end of the game.

Last week, varsity lost 2 players. Shawn was asked to join the varsity team for the rest of the 2012/2013 season. For Shawn, he was almost excited. A little sad that he won't get to play on the JV team, but happy to be playing at the varsity level.

He is now one of several Freshman in a 5A Texas varsity basketball team. A significant accomplishment.

I am proud that after a rough start he worked hard and moved up. This was a good life lesson and experience for him. Now if I can only get that lesson to translate in academics.