15/365

When the man's away, the wife will.....WATCH HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL! To say I love high school sports would be an understatement. There's something so special to me about that level of competition. The spirit. The camaraderie. The passion. The pride. This is what a high school athlete plays for. At any higher level of play, the love for the game becomes tainted with selfish incentives. (Scholarships, awards, contracts, bonuses, etc.) Those 4 years are the sweet spot, in my opinion. The years that you want to relive the rest of your life.

Part of my love for h.s. bball is that it's not just about basketball. There's two games going on. The basketball game. And the social game. The latter is what intrigues me. It's about a sophomore guy who scores the winning point at the buzzer, and all of a sudden gets the attention from the senior girls. It's about a cheerleader who's making eyes with one of the players from the opposing team. It's about a group of parents who have unofficial, but understood, assigned seating. It's about the outcast who shows up dressed in all black just to sit in the corner at the top of the bleachers and doesn't even like basketball. And in the case of Nashville private schools, it's about getting to wear street clothes for the first time all week. WOOHOO!

To take it even further, I would say that a home game might not even be about either of those things. It's about the "after game". The much-anticipated freedom of a Friday night. Who's spending the night at who's house. Who's going out to eat where. Who's going to makeout with who at midnite. Who's driving. I know that might that sounds simple & stupid. But I can remember what it felt like. Like the open road on a full tank. And when I go to a game, I still feel that energy in the kids around me. I remember how it felt to be the girl dating the guy who scored that winning point. It was some kind of Hollywood. And I remember how it felt as an athlete to look up in the stands and see my parents sitting in the same row every game. It was some kind of victory.

I got a taste of all of this tonight, as I watched one of my close family friends, Ross Welch, a sophomore at DCA, score two-3-pointers in the last minute of the game to take his team into overtime. He played a great game on ALL fronts. And I had a BLAST watching him do it.