From the perspective of the worst kid on a sports team

Dear Journal,

One word to sum up my day yet again, embarrassing. This morning I had to wear my jersey to school, for that huge stupid pep-really this afternoon. You can bet that got a lot of great comments from my classmates. It sure doesn’t help that I’m number 0. Ironic right? Yeah, well the whole morning I had to deal with those stupid comments, "Oh, hey I didn’t know you were on the team" and "Don’t you need to play to have a jersey?". Real great comebacks. I hate that I’m a joke to my entire class. All the other guys on the team got their lockers decorated, I did, too, but a bunch of people said I shouldn’t have, only people who play should. Well, whatever, I know I don’t play much, I guess everyone else does, too.

The pep-rally was awful. The ENTIRE school was there, and everyone on the team had to make a lay up. I’ve been working SO hard on my left-handed lay ups. Every practice I try really hard at them, and I have improved, I just wish everyone else noticed. Well, I of course missed my lay up.. In front of the entire school. I was the only one who missed. I even got boo’d. It was awful. Even everyone on the team was laughing.

Did I mention that we had a game today, too? Homecoming game, and we were playing really hard team. We were up by a few, when I was spaced out on the bench, as usual. I was in shock when coach called me over to go in. I was so happy, but really nervous, I didn’t want to mess up... and of course I did. When I walked in the game the crowd cheered for me, but not in a way that made me feel good, it was sarcastic, I could just tell. Well, the game started up again and I actually got the ball. Me, actually getting the ball, and then as you can guess, I actually got the ball stolen from me. Some of the guys encouraged me, they’re my teammates, and they knew I didn’t mean to do it, but I still felt dumb. I got taken out of the game the next play.

I used to love basketball. I don’t know what happened. I work my ass off every practice, and I get a little bit better, but I’m still not good enough. I’m not good enough to get in the games anyway. I want to get better. I want to be able to be on everyone else’s level. I’m sick of being the laughing stock of our team and our school.