Not Too High, Not Too Low jordanmarsh6, April 7, 2021April 5, 2023 Literally, just about ten minutes ago, I watched Jalen Suggs hit a game-winner for Gonzaga in the final four. Gonzaga is unbeaten this year and they were playing an upstart UCLA team. UCLA barely made the tournament as an 11-seed, but somehow had this unbeaten Gonzaga team on the ropes. It was just a classic shot. Like truly insane. He has three seconds left, takes the ball the length of the court, and then hucks a prayer. It went in. Jalen Suggs will now forever be a household name, because Jalen Suggs lived what millions and millions of kids dream about. I say this because I was one of those kids. Basketball was a huge part of my life growing up. I must have had thousands of practices, hundreds of games, and a lot of time spent in my driveway shooting hoops and dreaming of hitting a shot like Jalen Suggs just did. All my hours of playing basketball growing up came to a head my senior year of high school. I was supposed to be the leading scorer on a great team, and I was eager to prove myself as a player. It was dramatically different from what I expected. I had one pretty bad game at the beginning of the year. The shots I usually would make just weren’t falling. Rather than letting this one bad game slide and picking myself up for the next one, I was mentally crushed. I worried I wouldn’t live up to my own and others’ expectations and I worried all my time spent playing basketball would be wasted if I didn’t prove myself when it mattered the most. One bad game turned into two bad games, which turned into five bad games. I was in a hole, and mentally I couldn’t get out of it. My coach had to make the most reasonable choice midway through the season and replace me in the starting lineup. This was pretty much the nail in my basketball coffin. I had major dreams for how that year would turn out, and this was so so far from what I wanted it to be. I still was able to come off the bench, and the new role actually helped me have a couple good games. On the whole though, the year was a major disappointment. I often hear athletes say something along the lines of, “I try to not get too high or too low.” As I look back on what happened, I think internalizing advice like this would have been good for me. I let myself get too low after a couple bad games, and I wasn’t able to bounce back from that. I let the pendulum swing way too far from where it should. What’s my point? Again, we need to play the long game. We need to realize that in pursuit of a better version of ourselves, there will be times where we’re making excellent progress and there will assuredly be times when we won’t. I feel like it is so easy to get frustrated and give up when we’re in one of those valleys. As long as we’re generally trending upwards, amidst a rollercoaster of ups and downs, then we’re actually making progress. Self Improvement