My daughter makes basketball look good. Sure, I know I’m biased, but not a game is played that a parent or opposing coach doesn’t approach to tell my husband or I how amazing our 10-year-old is with the round ball.
Watching our daughter shoot at tonight’s practice, I came to a few realizations:
1. Our daughter is the smallest girl on her team (or any other team in her age bracket). Our daughter was blessed with our vertical challenge. She will always be shorter than the other kids.
2. Our daughter misses a lot of shots. For every shot she sinks, she misses two or three more.
3. Our daughter loves basketball. She couldn’t wait to come to tonight’s practice. She never misses a game. We have to force her to come inside when it gets dark, with the rhythmic dribble from the driveway replaced by the bang of the over-door goal in her bedroom.
It’s this constant practice (coupled with a bit of natural ability) that resulted in my daughter’s graceful layup, which is relatively unusual for her age.
During practice it occurred to me that we all could learn a few things from my dedicated daughter.
1. You don’t have to be the tallest, the best, the most… You have to use what you have the best way you can. We spend way too much time worrying that someone else is better than we are, and it cripples us. We need to distinguish this self-doubt.
2. As cliché as it seems, you have to take a lot of shots to score a lot of goals. Too many times we focus on the shots we missed, analyzing everything we should have or could have done. Instead, we should put the misses out of our minds and focus on attempts. Celebrate the goals. Make a lot of attempts. Put everything else aside. We can win unless we try.
3. We should all do what we love. Too often we get stuck in ruts in jobs we hate. If you don’t love what you’re doing, change it. If you love what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter how many goals you miss because the points you score will be truly amazing.
Emily Duncan says
Kenna!
thank you for your words of encouragement! so uplifting and just the perfect form of reassurance to keep giving it my best, no matter how much I mess it up!
thekrg says
Emily,
Thank you so much for your feedback! I’m glad you got something from the post.
Kenna
Jeannie Pappas says
Next to watching my own child play basketball, I love to catch “a Tatum game”. She is the personification of hard work, focus, and determination. And a little Energizer Bunny as she keeps going and going and going. These personality traits will lead her through so many endeavors. And she’s cute a bug. Isn’t great when you can get life lessons from a child??? Thanks for a great and encouraging post.
thekrg says
Thanks so much for your comment, Jeannie. It’s amazing what we can learn from our kiddos if we just pay attention, isn’t it?
Sam Tongue says
Coming from the journalism student’s perspective, I think this is exactly the kind of thing that people should be blogging about.
Yesterday, I was actually at a career fair with a bunch of journalism organizations from around the Phoenix, AZ area. The last booth I went to was for a large television station, and I greeted a man at the edge of the booth. He seemed like a nice, young man who had probably recently broken into the broadcast field. When he asked what I wanted to pursue and I replied ‘sports journalism,’ he immediately went into defense mode, lecturing me on how few jobs there were, how hard a field it is to get into, and basically how it wouldn’t be worth my time.
I left that table with a renewed sense of desire and drive to prove that man wrong, and that’s what I felt once again after reading this post.
As Wayne Gretzky said, “We miss 100% of the shots we don’t take.” It really is true how much we can learn from such an innocent child; maybe they’re the smart ones in such a negative world.
thekrg says
Sam,
I really appreciate your comment and kind words.
I think the guy you spoke to at the TV booth was full of it. At least you know where you don’t want to work, right?
Several of my current students are working in sports journalism. One senior is working with the Oklahoma City Thunder in their production department. Another is covering high school football for our major metropolitan newspaper.
I’m glad you didn’t let this guy discourage you. There are always good jobs for good people. Perhaps you can take his when you graduate?