My 11th grade year moved along smoothly. I continued to show promise on the football field and a lot of smaller school coaches were inquiring about me. Even though my team was sub par, I was playing great. But if you were to ask me back then how I played, I would've probably said something like, "Not good enough to win." I took losing really hard. I would try and smile around people, but when I was all alone, I would punch walls and kick stuff over. I finished the season as one of the best players in the city, but I knew that if I wanted to be a star my senior season would have to be lights out.
I continued to play basketball during my 11th grade year. One of the reasons I didn't stop was because I knew it would be in my best interest to stay in shape. Another reason was because I thought it would look good to college coaches if I played more than one sport. I also knew that I would be the starter with the guarantee to move up to varsity at the end of the JV season. This was probably a great decision on my part. I played good during the season. One of the highlights being that I scored the game winning basket against our archrivals, Dunbar. This culminated into a spot on the varsity bench for the rest of the season. I wasn't really salty about riding the bench onn varsity. I knew I wasn't great in basketball, so my heart wasn't in it like other players. Plus, I knew that with the type of team we had, we would probably play for the city championship. And right I was. We skated to the championship game and I felt special to be a part of it. One of the reasons I was so excited about the game was because I knew that everybody who was anybody would be in attendance. See, alot of the events in the city were more like a fashion show than a true support for the event in itself. And with the game being at Coolidge, it made it extra special.
Everybody on the team talked about one thing. Jackets. We could've cared less about trophies. A jacket represented something to us in the city. So much so that I was willing to play whatever sport I could just to get one. But that week leading up to the championship game, all we talked about was getting a jacket. Me and my other fellow bench riders were even talking about it on the bench during the game. Everytime we would go up, T.J. and I would look at each other and say, "Jackets!" Sadly though, we never got those jackets. We lost the championship game to Spingarn.
With all of the sports I played, the school year was over before you knew it. But I had payed so much attention to the field and the court, that my grades suffered a little. This definitely wasn't a good thing. My grades hadn't gotten bad enough to threaten my admission into college, but for my personal satisfaction, they were horrible. I knew that I couldn't start my senior year off this way.
The summer before senior year I decided that I would have to work once more. I still wasn't dressing like I would have liked to and I was always broke. So I decided to work at McDonald's. When I went on my interview, I saw something very interesting. K.K., T.J.'s cousin, was having an interview the same day...
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