Memories

It is 7:00 pm on May 2, 2013. I am at work anxiously waiting for my replacement to come in. As soon as he walks in the door, I grab my pizza and walk out the door. I go home and grab a sleeping bag, a pillow, a camping chair, and some snacks in preparation for the long night I had in front of me. We get up there about 8:00 and I am the first one to set my chair up. After sitting down I realize how long of I night I was going to have. Now in case you haven’t guessed I am talking about how I camped out for the grand opening of the Carl’s Jr. in Holbrook. I know that is seems kind of silly that I would wait all night for Carl’s Jr. however; this symbolizes one of the greatest lessons I have learned in high school. The lesson I learned is that you have to be out going and most importantly have fun. I have learned that you need to go and make as many memories as you can.

                This reminds me of what my basketball coach, Delmar, would always tell us. He would say, “You could walk out the gym right now, trip going down the stairs, tear your ACL, and never be able to play basketball again.” He would tell us this to remind us that we need to play our hearts out now while we can. He would remind us that we can’t be scared on the court. We just need to play our hearts out.  It is absolutely true that we have no clue what tomorrow will hold and not knowing this makes me what to go and have fun today.

Since it is my senior year I am trying to make as many memories and have as much fun as I can. One of the most memorable things I have done this year is the Mr. Roadrunner Pageant. What many people don’t know is all of the hard work that goes into that pageant. It is crazy how many rehearsals and how much fundraising was put into it.  Looking past the drama and hard work, I honestly wouldn’t trade that memory for anything.

Even though I was tired to the point of sleeping in class after staying up all night at Carl’s Jr., and that I was scared to death to walk on that stage to perform my talent act, I can honestly say that I had a blast doing those two things. Those are two memories that I will remember forever and that I can tell my children. I will forever be able to come to Holbrook and say that I was the first customer of Carl’s Jr. When the opportunity rises for you to do something fun do it. Don’t worry about what other people will think, just do it for the memories and like I have said all year make the most of every day and dominNate.

Four Liners

“Olin, put twenty two seconds on the clock! Ready! Go!” I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have heard this over my four years of basketball. These were the dreaded four liners. In these you had to run baseline to baseline four times within the twenty two seconds on the clock, and if you did not make it, well then get back on the line because you are about to go again. The reason I am starting out like this is because it gives the perfect example of how Delmar Johnson, my basketball coach, has impacted my life in high school.

For four years now I have been around Delmar just about year round. I’m with him all basketball season, I helped him with his youth basketball season, and I’ve traveled all around Arizona and even up to Colorado during the summer for basketball camps and tournaments with him. That is a long time to be around someone. Now I can’t say that Delmar was always my favorite person during these times, but looking back, he has taught me a lot.

Delmar has to be the most passionate person about basketball that I know. He truly loves it and he understands how it should be played. Now, how basketball should be played and how high school kids play are two completely different things. Delmar would yell at us, yank us out of the game when we made a mistake, and run us to where we felt like our legs were going to fall off.

I have never told anyone this but there was a point where I felt so low that I wanted to quit basketball. I texted Delmar and told him that basketball just wasn’t for me and that I’ll turn in my jersey on Monday. Within thirty seconds I received a reply from him telling me to meet up with him so we can talk this out. Well, after about thirty minutes of talking he finally told me that he isn’t going to let me quit and I will be forever grateful for that.

Delmar had broken me down.  He had put me through tough times, but I didn’t realize what he was doing in the process. He was breaking me down all the way to the bottom, but then he slowly helped build me back up even stronger than I was before. Just like with the four liners, when you are running them and he tells you to run another when you are already exhausted, and you think he is just being mean. However, then when you are in a game and you can run faster and longer than your opponent you realize that all of those four liners were to help up not to punish us. Delmar has put me through a lot; however, now when I look back at it, I realize that he was only doing it to make me better. Delmar has taught me that I will have really low parts in my life, but he has made me strong enough to  never give in. Thank you Delmar.

The Future

            Well this last week it really hit me. As I walked back from the library with my cap and gown in hand I realized that before I know it I will be walking across the stage getting my high school diploma. I realized that before I know it, my friends and I will be going our separate ways. That some of the people I see every day, I may not see ever in my life again. I am having mixed feelings about this happening.

            As I have expressed in other posts, I really love Holbrook. Yes, I wish that there were more stuff to do but I still love this small town. I like how everyone knows just about everyone. I love how we have a smaller school that allows us to get really involved. I enjoy the challenge of coming up with something to do and all of this makes me not want to leave this town.

            However, at the same time, I am completely ready to leave Holbrook. I am ready to leave my parents nest and live my life. Being a senior we always get asked what we will do the day after we graduate. They always tell us that the worst feeling we could get is waking up that next morning not having a plan for the future. With graduation approaching quickly I have had to make some decisions on what I want to do with my life. Making these decisions has actually made me want to leave Holbrook more.

            My entire life I have been encouraged to value education and as I got older I realized the importance of college. College will provide me with the opportunity to achieve my goals and have a profession that improves the lives of others. After doing much research on different jobs, I have decided that I would like to become a physical therapist. The next choice I was faced with was the college I would like to attend. So after Googling colleges that offer a degree in physical therapy, I came across Northern Arizona University. After getting accepted I have decided this is where I am going to attend.

            I guess where I am trying to go with this is that the future can be kind of scary. You never know what it has in store for you. This led me to a great quote from Abraham Lincoln. He said, “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” You will never know what life has in store for you. This reminds me what my basketball coach Delmar would always tell us. He would tell us that we are not in control of whether or not we get injured. That for all we know, we could walk outside, slip off the stairs, tear our ACL, and not be able to play another game. Then he would tell us that we need to just go out there and play our hearts out. I believe we could do this in our lives too. We need to live life one day at a time and make the most of it. Go out there and domiNate.

Spring Break

                Writing my blog this week has been a real struggle. I am sitting here draining my brain of ideas that I could write about. However, it seems like all I can think about is spring break.  This made me realize that I am finally coming down with it. Yes, I am talking about senioritis and I am coming down with it fast. It seems like all I look forward to is the next three day weekend or the next school trip where I get to miss some school.  So this blog I am going to talk about what I am looking forward to the most in the quickly approaching future.

                I absolutely, positively cannot wait until spring break. At the end of last year when we all were signing up for classes, Mr. Gardner came and talked to all of the juniors about show choir. He told us that there would be some openings for both boys and girls. Then he said something that caught both Zach’s and my attention. He said that they would be going on tour to Hawaii. So Zach and I talked about whether or not we should audition. After deciding that we were too scared to go and sing solos we dismissed the idea.

                Well about a week later in the computer lab, Mr. Gardner confronted us about auditioning. He told us that we could still go afterschool and audition. He explained that it would only be in front of him and assured us that it wouldn’t be that bad. He then told that we should just pick our favorite hymn and sing that for our audition. This had us convinced. We determined that this one solo would be worth going to Hawaii. So we went to the choir room after school. We were sitting on the couch while Mr. Gardner asked us why we wanted to be in choir and stuff like that until it came to the part we were dreading the most, the solos. This part still makes me chuckle. After me telling Zach to go first and Zach telling me to go first, Mr. Gardner said that we could just sing a duet. So after getting half way through the song, he stopped us and told us the audition was over. Relieved, we walked away.

                Well to speed up the story, the school board, sadly, turned down the trip to Hawaii. This led the choir to go to their backup plan, Disneyland. This is why I am excited for spring break. We get to go, perform there, and then get the rest of the time to have fun around the parks. I have never been to Disneyland before so just adds to my excitement. I guess where I am trying to go with this is that it is important to try something new. It is important to step outside of your comfort zone and do something that you always wanted to do, but were too scared to try.

Goals

                I remember last year in Mr. Long’s class he would make us write goals every week. He would tell us to make goals that are for a short amount of time or goals that we want to accomplish the next week. He would have us write a medium goal, something that we wanted to accomplish by mid-term or by the end of the nine weeks. Lastly, he would make us write a long-term goal. Not to be mean but I thought this was the dumbest assignment in the world. Every week he would tell us to pull out our goal list and then we would have to report on how we did on the short term goal, and then we would have to report on how we're progressing towards the other goals. Every week I would write some lame goal that I knew I would accomplish with little to no effort. Sadly, I continued to do this for most of the year and did not write a serious goal.

                However, now that I am a mature senior, goals are becoming more important to me. May is coming quite quickly. Before I know it I am going to be graduated and then it is completely up to me how I make my life and quite frankly, if I do not have goals then I am not going anywhere.

                Mr. Long always told us that if you do not write the goal down, then it does not count as a goal and you are less likely to accomplish it. That is what I need to work on. I have goals in my head that I want to accomplish but I need to take those goals and put them on paper. One of the best feelings you can have is when you accomplish a long-term goal. Ever since I turned twelve years old my dad always told me that I am going to be an Eagle Scout. This became one of my goals that I wanted to accomplish.

                Just in case you did not know you can only obtain your Eagle Scout award between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Well, I turned eighteen on the sixteenth of this month and I still was not an Eagle Scout on the first of this month. So I had to make a mad dash and hurry and finish all of the requirements. After a few stressful weeks and a ton of phone calls I finally achieved my goal and received my Eagle award on the tenth of this month. Six days before my birthday!

                As seniors, we are ultimately in charge of what becomes of our lives. I know that goals seem really lame and seem less important than other things that we have going on in our lives, but I honestly believe that they are important. Mr. Long used to always tell us that if we write our goals down and hang them somewhere we see it every day then we will be more inclined to one day accomplish that goal.

Price of Tea in China

                Yesterday, while I was making a pizza at work, I started to think of what I could write my blog on this week. I originally thought that I could write about my work and how we need to work hard for our money, but then I realized that sounds pretty boring.  So, I did what anyone else would do. I asked one of my coworkers what to write about. After explaining that it has to have some educational value to it he said that I should write about the price of tea in China. So here we go. As you all know tea is very popular in China so prices are normally expensive. The current price is ¥ 1.40, which converts to some amount in U.S. dollars. No I am just kidding but at least now you know.

                What I really want to talk about are friendships. It is kind of interesting to me to see all different types of friendships we have. We have those friends that we used to be best friends with, but at some point in time, we fall apart and go our separate ways. We have work friends; there to make work more enjoyable. Then we have those close friends that we can tell anything and don’t have to hide anything.

                As children, it seems like you could just walk right up to some kid that you have never met before. You will share your toy and they will share theirs and then all of the sudden you guys are best friends.  However, as you get older, friendships seem harder to get. You and your first friends start to drift apart and that leads you to finding new friends.  

                I am about to share something with you that I am sure you do not know, but high school is full of drama. It has always been interesting to me that one day two people can be best friends, always together. Then a week or so later you see them talking behind each other’s backs and are just mean. How could you all of the sudden hate someone that a week earlier you honestly cared about?

This led me to think about how we make friends. I first thought of my fellow coworker.  Starting out at Mr. G’s, I was the only worker from Holbrook. So walking in I can honestly say that I did not know anyone I was working with. So being a little bit intimidated, I just kept to myself for the first couple weeks. After becoming more comfortable, I started to come out of my shell and started to talk more. I quickly became friends with a couple of guys there and it makes work a lot more fun.

The great thing about dominating every day is that, you do not have to do it by yourself. Make new friends, keep those friends, and take them with you on your mission to pure domination.

Coaching

                The sound of shoes squeaking on the court. The smell of popcorn in the air. The chants and screams of a packed gym. Normally I would be saying that this is the type of environment that I love to play in, which it is. However, I have found out that this is pretty sweet environment to coach in. For about the past four years my basketball coach, Delmar, has asked me to help him with his youth basketball league. When I first started out, I would only keep score. Delmar slowly let me start to referee basketball games and I thought that was the best thing to do.

                This year, however, Delmar’s wife Jme was telling me that they were short a couple coaches for the third through fifth grade age group and she asked if I would be interested in coaching a team. Of course, I agreed to it. After recruiting Zach as an assistant coach, we got out roster and headed to our first practice. We both showed up early not knowing what to expect from our team. As we start doing some warm up drills we were pretty quick to find out who on our team knew what they were doing and who would need some extra attention. As practice continues on we discover just how good our team is. We come to find out that we might have the best player in our age group. This one player, who we call Bubba, is crazy good. He can dribble between the legs and behind the back, make tough passes, and shoot perfect swishes.

                As you can probably guess, Zach and I were pretty excited to have Bubba on our team and we could not wait until our first game two weeks later.  However, a week later, at practice, Bubba came up to us with a sad look on his face. He told us that he could not be at our game that week because he was going out of town.  I am not even going to lie to you guys; this really scared Zach and I. Bubba was the player that got everyone to score, so we were worried how we would do without him. However, everything turned out good. All of the rest of our players stepped up and we won by six.

                My team of third through sixth graders taught me a lesson that day. Yes, they knew that it would be hard to win without Bubba, but they never gave up. They all believed that if they each did the best they could that we would win. I, on the other hand, was not as optimistic. This team of little kids taught me that you can never give up. You just need to believe in yourself and that you can accomplish all your goals and then you have to go out there and work your hardest, then will you reach your goal.