Reflective Essay: Overcoming Adversity On The Basketball Team

In my sophomore year of high school I was faced with adversity on the basketball team. The coaches showed a lot of favoritism and I was not one of their players they favored. They would put me in positions to fail, like placing me as a Center when I was more suited to play Small Forward or Power Forward. They expected me to not perform well and wanted to punish me and take playing time away, but instead I worked hard and performed well enough that they could not afford to keep me on the sidelines. When I was playing in the game if I did anything wrong, something so small that it is hardly even considered a fault, my coach would pull me out of the game and yell at me. When someone else did the same thing or something worse, he would pat them on the back and tell them "You'll do better next time," or he would completely ignore it and not say a word.
I was very respectful but wanted to know why he would treat me the way he did. Finally as the JV season ended, the varsity coaches approached me and told me they were proud of how I responded to the adversity and brought me up to play on varsity. As a sophomore that was a big deal to me. What I learned from that situation is that as long as you keep your composure, talk with the others to see their point of view, and always keep working hard, you will always conquer the adversity no matter what. I had to deal with constant adversity for almost 5 months but I beat it and learned a big life lesson. I am glad I went through that basketball