Confessions of a Basketball Addict, Part 1
Peter Robert Casey (http://www.peterrobertcasey.com)
In March of 2000, after a disappointing college JV season and a long,
unremitting struggle to restore a harmonious passion back into my life
for playing basketball, I decided to quit the game cold turkey.
My decision was formalized in a meeting with the varsity coach who had
called me into his office at the close of our season to inform me of
my promotion to the varsity team. While I valued his offer and
endorsement of my playing ability, my mind had already been made up—I
would be moving on from the game of basketball.
No press conference. No retirement celebration. No jersey to be raised
to the rafters.
My “official” playing career ended with a “thanks, but no thanks
conversation” and a cold, lonely walk back to my freshman dormitory
where I retired for an afternoon nap.
Strangely, for a sport that had largely defined my adolescent identity
and even determined my college of choice, I actually felt liberated by
my decision to quit. Proof of my athletic mortality laid on my desk--a
copy of our last monthly practice /game schedule full of crossed-off
dates and a small countdown in the top right corner of each date box
that had finally reached zero.
Though I played really well in our preseason workouts and outran all
incoming and returning players during conditioning drills, I
purposefully chose not to even try out for the Varsity team,
justifying it in my head an easier way to walk away from the game at
the season’s end. At some point during my high school career, my
passion for playing the game had slipped into an unhealthy obsession
that controlled, consumed and conflicted my time and thoughts for
pursuing other life activities.
I spent my spring and summer months like most other aspiring college
basketball players seeking an athletic scholarship: playing on AAU
teams, attending 3-4 basketball camps, participating in exposure
showcases in front college coaches and scouting service reps,
competing in summer leagues and spending countless hours in the gym
and on the pavement refining my skills.
My efforts yielded a few shoeboxes full of letters from college
coaches, mostly of the D-III variety; an obvious sign of my athletic
fate. During my senior year of high school I spent more time on the
phone with small school assistant coaches than I did with my then
girlfriend. Don’t get me wrong the attention was flattering. But as a
basketball gym rat, this reality didn’t fit the vision of having Coach
K or Boeheim popping in for mom’s meatloaf to discuss the advantages
of becoming a Blue Devil or Orangemen alum.
In the end, I would become a Red Hawk...or an Engineer depending on
which generation of RPI athlete you spoke to.
To be continued...