Author Archives: The Yellow Forest

06.28.11
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Mr. P

Mr. PThis is Mr. P.  His real name is Principle.  C. and I won him at the San Diego fair on Saturday.  We decided to play this carnival game where they had a hoop about thigh high with a slanted backboard that was about chest high.  You are supposed to hit the backboard and have the ball drop straight down into the hoop.  This game is difficult because of the way the backboard is slanted.  If you don’t throw the ball at a high enough angle or if you throw it too hard or if you don’t throw it with a backspin, the ball won’t drop straight down.  It will instead bounce too far out from the hoop.

The game was $5 for 1 ball and $10 for 3 balls.  One in wins.  The guy decided to offer us both prizes if one of us made it to entice us to play.  Ok, we agreed.  C. went first and missed.  I went next and to our surprise, I actually made it!!!  We celebrated and waited for our prize.  You know what the guy says, “No, you don’t win.  You shot it incorrectly.”  SERIOUSLY?  What does that even mean?  He tried to accuse me of leaning – you’re not supposed to lean.  I said, I wasn’t leaning and I made it.  He said, I saw you lean, I’m the referee.  I said, I threw the ball, I think I know what I was doing.  All the while, C. is saying, “she made it! she made it!”  He said, “that’s why we have this rule here, no leaning.”  I told him to give me my prize.  He tried to give me a few more balls to throw.  I told him to demo how to do it again and as he did it, I told him he was leaning.  I told him repeatedly.  We argued and argued.  Finally he said, you can have one of these prizes on the bottom but that he got to pick the prize.  He tried to give me this ugly bear, I said no.  He said I could either have the bear or shrek.  Those were freaking ugly.  The prize we really wanted was hanging at the top – an angry birds pig!  But since I could only pick from the bottom, I picked the Mr. P.  He was the best looking.  C. said she didn’t care about the prize.  I said, I don’t care either, but we’re taking it for principle’s sake!!  That’s how red bird got it’s name.  :)

All the arguing scared all the people away.  If he would have given us the prize initially, he could have gotten a lot more people to play.  I wonder if the guy loses money if he gives away prizes.  I wonder how many times he tries to pull that “no leaning” thing on people.  Plus the other guy who was demo-ing also leaned like crazy!  AND when he tried to teach this other guy how to do it by swinging his arm for him, he was totally pulling him over the railing.  Dumb.

Anyway, I’m happy we stuck with it to get the prize.  Then I got to lug it around for an hour – it was heavy, awkwardly large, and made my arms tired.  I also kept accidentally hitting people with it.  I even nailed a lady in the head.  Oops.

That’s the story of Mr. P.  Also, don’t play that game.  I can’t believe the guy tried to scam me even though the carnival games itself are a scam.  Geez.

06.27.11
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sore

When you shoot, throw, hit, a ball – there’s a feeling.  It feels a certain way when you complete that action and you know through that action whether you’ve made a good throw, hit, or shot.  It’s weird when you can’t feel that action.  When you can’t feel that action, you lose the ability to complete an accurate action.

My triceps are still sore.  I think it would have been better by now if I didn’t have to carry Mr. P (story to come) and his big head around for hours on Saturday.  Because my triceps were sore, I couldn’t shoot.  I couldn’t feel the shot.  I couldn’t adjust to shoot correctly because I lost the feeling of how to shoot.  It’s so weird and really lame.  My shots were completely off to the side or short.  Really bad.  Wide open shots.  I can’t believe it.  This happened one other time, after the insanity workout.  My calves were sore for almost 2 weeks and I couldn’t shoot because I couldn’t jump.  All I could feel was pain and not the natural feeling.

It’s such a minor detail but so important.  It’s also interesting because I know the reason why I can’t shoot, yet I can’t control it.  From everyone else’s point of view – well, I must just be having a really off night.

My arm needs to un-sore itself by Wednesday night so I can play better.

06.26.11
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Kicks

adidas kicksI got new bball kicks.  It’s been like 10 years.  I’m usually afraid to buy new shoes for sports.  The reason is that most shoes are super uncomfortable and hurt my feet so when I find a pair that actually fit well and are comfy, I keep for a long time.  I’ve purchased many shoes where I’ve only worn it once or twice to never wear again because they hurt me.  It’s usually the left pinky toe.  Don’t know why.

The thing that sucks is that I don’t really find out that it hurts until I wear them out.  Once you wear them out, you can’t return it.  See, that’s the problem.  Lame.

So, I hope these work.  I’m going to try them out at tomorrow night’s game.  I’m a little skeptical right now since they aren’t super comfy.  Hopefully they break in.

06.24.11
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workout surprise

After playing 4 straight days of basketball at the end of last week and early this week, I found myself craving exercise the past 2 days.  How strange.  While I’m exercising, it’s a freaking pain and sometimes really sucks when you feel like you need an oxygen mask.  But afterwards, it feels good.

It’s way easier to workout with 1) people in better shape than you, 2) people who are telling you what to do (aka at basketball practice).  1 is good because they push you to do more than you normally would by yourself.  Heck, by myself, I would give up 5 minutes into it and stop whenever I got tired, which is pretty quickly.  2 is good because you can’t stop, lol.  If someone is telling you to run lines, do defensive slides, etc.  You can’t really be like, I’m not going to do it.  You have to.

Yesterday, I worked out with C.  We were supposed to just shoot around but it ended up way more than that.  We were going to run until the courts freed up.  One lap around was a little more than 1 mile.  We ran 1 and up this hill, man I was so tired.  Then we threw the football around, little did I know, C. wasn’t done.  She wanted to run another lap!  She normally runs 3 laps.  Crazy.  So I was like, fine, but no hill.  While I was struggling along, C was just running little loops beside me!  Geez, I’m slow and out of shape.  Haha.  Then we threw the football around more.  Then she’s like ready for 3?  I’m like no!  Lol.  She’s like, alright, next time we’ll run 2 straight. -_-

Then we got back to her apartment and she’s like, now I do push-ups and crunches.  What?!  She does 50 wall push-ups and 50 crunches on the ball – 3 sets.  I did 20 girl push-ups and 20 crunches on the ball – 3 sets.  By the last set, I couldn’t even do a push-up anymore.  And my abs were burning!

Today, I’m a bit sore.  I should definitely exercise more with C.  I think I exercise much better when I’m being pushed.

06.21.11
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disappearing hope

Does it scare you to think that you’ve made it somewhere to realize shortly after that you’re not welcome?  It scares me to know that the one person that provided so much hope for everyone didn’t make it.  If they can’t make it, how can we?  What is our fate?  Sigh.

06.20.11
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semi pro basketball practice

After my poor performance at both practices the other night, W STILL wants me to play.  Wow!  He must really see something that I can’t see.

Man, I played 4 straight days of ball.  2 days of practice, 1 day of pickup, and 1 game tonight.  It actually feels good afterwards, but not during.  At the two practices, I was going to keel over.  Needed an oxygen mask or something.  Wow, I could not run.  I haven’t participated in basketball drills in 10 years!  Yes, literally 10 years.  Nor have I had to do conditioning.  Those full court shooting and passing drills really killed me.

I am easily intimidated.  There are some pretty good girls – some okay ones.  But you know what I don’t like.  I don’t like that people aren’t friendly.  People don’t say hi, people don’t smile.  Why so serious?  Ok, ok, it’s not that I’m friendly either.  But hey, my excuse is that I’m the outsider, it would really really help if people were more welcoming and encouraging.  But some girls look so hard core I just feel like I’m so sucky and shouldn’t be there.  Yes, I do care about what they think.  I’m so afraid of messing up, which would make me look more sucky, that I don’t do anything.  The few shots I took were so far off.

I’m not used to playing this fast speed basketball game where I need to shoot off the dribble, be running, jump stop and pop up.  I’m used to set shooting aka stand there, catch the ball, shoot.  That takes a lot of time, there isn’t a lot of time with these people.  I had so many airballs and ridiculously off (bounce off the side of the backboard) shots that it was embarrassing, I also couldn’t make a layup!  Sheesh.  :(

The other girls, one of the pretty good ones, just brings the ball down as point, pops a 3 at the top of the key.  And she kept doing it too.  Sometimes I wonder if the difference between me and these types of people is that they aren’t afraid to shoot it.  After all, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, right?  Sigh.

It’s funny that they also took our photo and put it up on the website when we never even committed to the team!

I’m not even sure about what I want to do.  That’s a problem.  Do I want to play in this thing?  Because clearly, I have an opportunity.  They definitely haven’t found the full talent in SD so it’s pretty open right now.  There are only a few reasons why it would be good to play:  1) exercise like crazy (which I could use), 2) I can say that I played semi-pro ball! (LOL), 3) I could possibly improve my game (maybe).  Reasons to not play:  1) I’m really not that good compared to these people, 2) It’s a huge time commitment, 3) It’s also far!, 4) I’m really big on the buddy system and need either C or K to play too.

I already told W I’m not going to Vegas with them.  He says to still come out and practice.  You know, if I was those other girls, I wouldn’t want the 3 of us to play.  Haha.  Because, don’t you want dedicated people.  People who WANT to be there?  Not a bunch of unsure, question mark people.

Anyway, who knows what’s next.  I really really wish people were friendlier!

06.16.11
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Thoughts of Late

  • I’m going tomorrow.  I’m still afraid.  I don’t know why I’m going.  I don’t know what to expect.  I don’t even know how I want it to turn out.  The unknown scares the crap out of me.
  • We smile, nod, and pretend – yes, it’s unfortunate that we have to be that fake.
  • Be thankful I’m not anorexic.
06.13.11
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crazy basketball

Ok yeah, I really think W has made a big mistake.  I am definitely NOT cut out for this crazy basketball thing.  Definitely not.  He has no idea.  He thinks I will step it up and play to the competition when the time comes.  Yeah no.  I think the most I will do is go and watch the scrimmage this weekend if they have one.

On the other hand, I told K about it and she is super interested.  C on the other hand was like, “um, that sounds super hardcore.”

K doesn’t think she’s good enough.  What the heck?  She’s so good!  Ha, that is kind of amusing.  W thinks I’m good and I don’t think that is true.  I think K is super good and she’s saying she’s not good enough.  It’s almost the same except in my case, it is true (I’m not good..that is).

06.11.11
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The Psychology of Confidence as it Pertains to Basketball

The way you think about yourself, your perception of ability, in other words, your confidence, affects your ability to perform.  True?  I think so.  Pep talks usually revolve around boosting player’s confidence.  If you have confidence, you’ll be more relaxed and be able to be more in the flow.  If you have confidence you’ll do more.

I play in a basketball league where the average age of women on the teams is probably around 40-45 years old.  It’s a purely recreational league which means you aren’t supposed to get crazy in trying to win.  Share the ball, encourage each other, and have a good time.  There’s people of all different types of levels playing – some who’ve never played basketball, some who played rec ball, some who played high school, and even some who played college – I don’t think there are any pro or semi-pro people.  I was aware of all of this when I joined and figured that this would be fun to play in because there is no pressure.  I don’t like pressure.  I think this is my third or fourth season playing in the league.  When I first started playing, I didn’t do much.  Mostly passed the ball around, shot it occasionally, whatever.  (Side Note:  We always have the same 2 refs at the games.  They’ve been reffing the league for many many years and they know everyone.  They’re very encouraging and give tips to the players.  They’re super nice and funny too.  There’s this one ref, W, who is more of the talker.)  In the second season, I started to do more but probably only because W was like: “Shoot the ball!  Shoot the ball!  I know what you’re doing.  You’re new and all just trying to feel out the league but I know you can play.  That stuff was last season, step it up!”  He was sort of right.  I am pretty confident about my ability to play well in this league but I didn’t want to be a ball hog or make people not like me.  One reason was also because they let me play even though I didn’t meet the age requirement because I was nice (haha).  I think the next season after they finally lowered the age limit so I wasn’t “breaking the rules”, I was a bit more comfortable.  Then in a lot of the games, especially the ones we were losing, W would be telling me to shoot the ball and step it up and tell me that my team needs me.  But in my head, it’s like, well then that means I need to shoot more but then I start feeling like a ball hog and I don’t want to do that.  I like passing the ball and giving people opportunities to shoot.  And if someone is wide open, I’m not just going to take the shot when they can have a better shot.  W likes to tell me, you need to score early and get your team up by 10-15 points, then you can take a break and pass it around.  He gets mad when I take myself out of the game when I feel like I’m sucking.  I’m like, I don’t want to be a ball hog.  He’s like, they don’t think you’re a ball hog, they’re relying on you, they WANT you to shoot the ball.  See, I don’t know.  I’m conflicted with that.  I’d still feel like a ball hog!

On a separate note, my confidence is very easily swayed.  If I take a couple shots in a game and I don’t make it or they’re super off, I pretty much stop shooting.  I stop shooting because I think that if I shoot it, it’s not going to go in.  On the other hand, when I start making shots, I feel much more confidence and actually believe that the shots I take will actually go in – then I want the ball.  A good athlete can overcome this.  They will keep shooting and keep going at it.

Last Monday, W comes up to me and is like, hey I got this league I want you to play in.  It’s a higher-level of basketball that I know you can play in.  And immediately, I was hesitant.  My mind flashed back to the Rock league I was playing in.  See, depending on who I’m playing with and the skill level of the people, I immediately get scared and my confidence goes to zero.  When I think about the Rock league and I think about K playing – that girl is crazy.  There’s no way I can compete with that.  She likes to play competitive and the league we were in had some pretty good people.  It also had people that were really tall and/or really big.  When I find myself in such situations, I immediately turn into someone who doesn’t really play basketball – I’m running around the court just to exercise.  Heck I don’t even want the ball because I’m afraid that I’m going to turn it over.  In fact, when there are fast breaks, I purposely do a roundabout way of turning before I run down the court so that I’m not the first one there because I don’t want the ball on a fast break because I’m afraid I’m going to miss it.  I don’t want to shoot the ball because I’m probably not going to make it.  So then, I started thinking about this a lot.  I was thinking that if there was someway I could build up my confidence to believe that hey, I can actually hang with these people, that I can contribute, then I wouldn’t be afraid, and then I would be more relaxed, and then what I do would actually work (aka shoot and make a basket!).

Back to the league W was telling me about.  He said it was something new starting up in San Diego and that they had asked him to coach a team.  He said that he needed a good 2 guard and knew that I would be the perfect person.  (Seriously?)  He said some of the girls are super serious – they want to go pro or play overseas.  (Uh…crazy, no thanks.)  He said some girls when he asked if they had experienced they just looked around at each other and were like..what does that mean?  Some said they played rec and others said they played high school.  He said I would be great.  He said it’s kinda like a league or tournament?  I wasn’t sure and neither was he.  He wanted me to come check it out.  He said you play locally and then if you play well, you travel.  (Um..is this like a travel basketball club for adults?)  He asked me if I played in college.  I said no.  He said why not?  I told him I couldn’t hang, wasn’t good enough.  Actually, he’s not the first person who’s asked me if I played college ball.  In fact, I would have liked to but how I am now in certain basketball leagues or games, all timid and afraid, that’s how I was in high school.  I think I’m able, but I’m afraid.  So, maybe if I had the confidence I do in this Monday league in high school, I would have been a better player and maybe actually get to play college ball.  It’s not like I can’t shoot well.  I can, when I’m not afraid.  I make 3 pointers.  I’ve made them playing in different leagues, playing with guys, in high school, shooting around.  So now I’m trying to trick..err..convince myself that maybe I can play a higher level of basketball the way I do on Monday nights.  That’s why I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about it.  Am I actually capable and I’m afraid, thus default to, I can’t, and then actually play timidly because I think I’m not good enough or am I actually incapable even if I wasn’t afraid?  Can I really hang?  After W asked me about that league and told me to think about it, I couldn’t sleep for 2 nights and that’s all I could think about all day long.  What is the situation here?  Why do I have a lack of confidence in certain basketball situations?  If I believe that I can compete, I WILL compete.  But if I don’t believe I can, I will almost always just run around and play the “I’m useless” role.

So, the conclusion is that I’m still struggling because I don’t know if I am capable of competing.  And because I don’t know, I am leaning on the “I can’t hang” excuse.  The good thing is that I’m aware of this so I am considering the fact that maybe I am capable.  I guess I just need to overcome, be confident, and see myself actually perform WELL at a higher level.  Because I think that is the only way to pull me over.  I told W that I wasn’t sure about it.  I actually don’t have enough details about it – is this a weekend/weeknight activity?  I obviously have a day job.  How serious is this league?  W thinks I can play and I value his opinion.  If he can coach me and help me become better, I think I would feel more confident.  If I put my pathetic lack of confidence thoughts behind me and convinced myself I was good enough to play, would I be able to?  (Sorry, this is getting redundant – these thoughts just keep circling in my head and I’m trying to figure out how to conquer or trick myself into it but I kinda don’t want to trick myself – run-on sentence – woo!)  He told me they had practice tonight – I’m out of town.  He told me they have a game tomorrow.  Yikes.  He told me to give him a call tonight to find out the details.  I guess I’ll do that much.  But really – playing against people who are trying to go pro or semi-pro?  I really don’t know about that…maybe K can and C can.  Me?  I don’t know.  I’d like to contribute – I don’t need to be a star.  I just need to make a basket here and there.  I need to be..confident.

So, I guess we’ll find out after the call…dun dun DUN!