When I was young, my dad wanted me to play basketball. By about 5th grade however, I was deeply immersed in soccer. I loved the game. I thought it was the bees knees. There wasn’t a season that I didn’t sign up for. Me and the fellas made it early to the grade school playground in order to get more soccer time in.

As I moved from grade school (really, the peak of my soccer glory years) to Junior High, I tried out and made the school team. What a thrill. We had a great year in which I believe we played for the championship.

During this time period, I vividly recall my dad wanting me to play basketball. Being the know-it-all son of a gun (I was going to cuss but Juli is not happy with me right now) that I was, I resisted all attempts to get me to play basketball. I kept insisting that soccer was going to hit it big in America and that there would be plenty of opportunities to become a soccer star. (Wish I could take those thoughts back)

Anyways, I quickly came to the realization that I was not that good. I don’t know if it was that I couldn’t get out of the way of my own feet or if the little Mexican boys that tried out for the team were just that much better than me. As I looked forward, I saw the writing on the wall. A white boy on a team with a bunch of Mexican boy’s that could run circles around me. Not going to happen. My only shot was to be the token white boy but that didn’t happen either. So, I began looking at basketball.

My dad went and played down at the Del Rio building in Chandler every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:30am. I began going with him. I must have only been 14 or so at the time and I was awkward as all get out. I was used to kicking the ball not bouncing it. Touching the ball with your hands was, well, forbidden! As I went though, and they started to let me play because they were sometimes short a person, I began to really love it. The guys that played were super nice and generally patient with me. My confidence began to grow.

Fast forward a few years. Ok, maybe not a few but that issue has been well document already. Fast forward to now and I love to play the game of basketball. In moving to Utah, I thought, “oh boy! I am moving to basketball heaven!” Little did I know that was not the case. I was told that we needed to move farther south. Well, we moved farther south. The other Saturday, I drove around to no less than 7 stake centers looking for a pickup game. I finally found one but it was already late and they were pretty much done. As I complained to a friend in the ward that no one played basketball in our area, he mentioned some guys play just down the street from me each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. WHAT!? They even play at 5:30am. I became excited and each day they were playing I would say the night before, I am going to go tomorrow. Umm, did you know that 5:30am is really early? It is. Trust me.

So long story short, I am back to playing basketball Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I am not that good and if I had listened to my dad and started when I was younger, I probably would be in the NBA by now. I’m pretty sure of it.