My college basketball coach almost knocked me out.
It was not an accident. He meant to knock me on my ass.
It all happened during the heat of a 5 on 5 game in the summer of 2007.
I had graduated from high school just a few weeks earlier, and now I was getting my first taste of college basketball.
Our head coach, Coach Wagner (Wags for short), knew we were short 1 player to make it a 5 on 5 game so he decided to lace up the sneakers and play with us.
He was a hell of a player back in his day, and could still easily keep up with our guys. What I noticed right away was his competitiveness. He wanted to win. He hustled much harder than the college athletes that were half his age.
So when it came time to set a screen on someone and lay their ass out, he took full advantage. The person he laid out just so happened to be me, the lanky soon-to-be freshmen and newest member to the team.
Coach Wags was on the opposite team. I was running back on defense when the other team came racing down the court with the ball, and it was my job to stop the guy with the ball. So I turned to sprint, almost getting up to full speed with my eyes only on the guy dribbling the ball.
And WHAM!
All of a sudden I am looking up at the rafters. For a split second everything was blurry. I'm unsure if it was because I got hit so hard or because I had tears in my eyes. Probably both.
I quickly sat up to see who hit me. It was Coach Wags....!
He had positioned himself perfectly to set a legal screen on me. He knew how fast I was running so he braced himself knowing there was going to be a hard collision. He was the one that remained standing, I on the other hand did not.
To my surprise at the time, he didn’t offer to help me up, say sorry, or even check on me to see if I was alright. Nope. He just turned around and kept playing. He even scored 2 seconds later.
I asked Coach Wags years later when I was graduating college if he remembered this story. He had zero recollection. I was not surprised, that was just the type of competitiveness he carried.
At that time in my athletic career as a freshman, he wanted to win more than I did. He valued competition, he valued being competitive, and valued having a competitive mentality.
Something in me after that moment gravitated toward that value.
I soon found myself to be one of the most competitive people on the team. This didn't mean only on the court. It meant competing with myself to be the best I could be - in the classroom, volunteering on campus, even in how I filled the water bottles and water jug at practices for my teammates.
This type of competitiveness is a core part of who I am today.
If you are fortunate enough to find another person that has a similar value as you, lean into it. Embrace it. Learn from it. You might be surprised how much it can impact and transform your life.
Week 8 of 52
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