Recently one of my high school basketball teammates posted a photo of the team from our senior year, 2007, with a nostalgic caption about how much she missed “the best team/friends ever” and all the great times we had back then. I clicked “like” on the photo and took a moment to smile at it, but it struck me how I would have never thought to post a picture like that. Certainly not of my basketball team, and probably not even of my actual high school friend group.
Unlike Aurora, who I know was actually good friends with a lot of people from her high school basketball team, I never fit in with my teammates, at least not as much as I would have liked. Back in high school I was extremely shy and insecure, so these confident, pretty, athletic girls with their over-the-top attitudes made me feel like some kind of alien. None of them were in any of my classes and many came from backgrounds pretty different from mine. As a result, there was a central clique on the team and I just wasn’t in it. My insecurities about my basketball skills didn’t help either; I didn’t make varsity until my senior year, while several of the girls had played together on varsity already. I started almost every game that year and got tons of playing time, but that was mostly because the girl who would have had that spot tore her ACL a few weeks before the season started. All this to say, I never felt secure in my role on the team, I never felt like part of the group, so I pretty much stayed out of the way and didn’t speak unless spoken to.
It wasn’t an antagonistic thing, though. I don’t think any of the girls disliked me, they just didn’t really notice me. I loved the game, so I was happy to be there participating and playing, even though we were a very mediocre team compared to others in our league. I have some fun memories from basketball, but they tend to be on the court, not in the locker room or the back of the bus. But when Micha, our star player and the only one to go on to play ball in college, posted this throwback photo, I know she was reliving amazing times with her best friends. From what she’s said on facebook, I can tell that life hasn’t gone up for her since senior year—in fact, it might be worse now than it was then, when she was a star player and one of the most popular girls in school.
A lot of my other teammates commented on the post echoing her sentiments, saying things like, “those were the best days!” and “I wish I could go back!” For me, those weren’t bad days, but they weren’t my best days. I’ve made better friends and had more fun experiences since high school than I ever did in those four years. I don’t wish that I could go back, and it makes me a little sad to know that being a high school basketball player is still a top highlight from the last ten years of some of those women’s lives.