Miscellaneous #7

      During high school, I went through a lot of different injuries. It was very rough since I played sports throughout my whole high school career. My freshman year, I played basketball. I had been playing basketball ever since I was in the 5th grade, because that was the youngest age that Crestview started having teams. My dad coached basketball for twenty years, so I was around it my whole childhood. Basketball was definitely my third favorite sport, but I still liked it. I was never really good at ball handling, but I was a pretty good shooter. My dad always told me I wasn't mean enough for basketball, and I never really knew how to take it. I tried to be nasty, but that just wasn't my style. I became more aggressive the older I got, because with age I became stronger. During conditioning my freshman year of basketball, we were running out on the football field and it was very cold that day. We were running 100 yard pyramids, and as I was running, I could feel my quad pulling more and more the harder I ran. I didn't want to sit out or stop running, because I didn't want the coaches or my teammates to think I was faking it. I stuck through it and throughout the rest of the season, I ended up tearing my quad all the way through. I would run on it during practices and just grit through the pain. If it got too bad I would ease up, but I never wanted to sit through games. My mom would massage it before games in her office with biofreeze and wrap it with ace bandages to keep it warm. It always helped a little bit, but never enough to keep it from pulling. Towards the middle of the season I went to the doctor and he made me sit out the rest of the season. Our team went to state that year, so it was really hard to sit out and not be able to be a part of that experience.