nimrod chronicles [part 2]

my priorities at the time were, as memory serves, in this order: basketball, intoxication, friends, school. really the first two were a conflicting tie, which i'll explain in due time. i feel as though i'm being self-indulgent. oh well.

jay, reid, and i all wore number 35 at hyde park. what can i say? we're a basketball family. we always joke that when all three of the fenlaw children were born, we were handed a basketball, slapped on the ass, and shipped directly to the doors of hyde park. my parents loved basketball, my brothers and i started playing before we could add, and for as long as i can remember, we had season tickets to UT basketball games.

summer before freshman year i would wake up at 5:30am to go the gym with my dad so that i could be in shape to make varsity basketball. when i was little i spent summers going to basketball camps. when i was in high school i started working at those camps. and actually, my coach for the last two years of high school was a guy i had worked with at said camps. i still to this day have never been as consistent and naturally motivated to do anything as i was with basketball in high school.

every time it rained, i'd be in the back yard shooting baskets pistol pete style. i'd stay after practice to shoot free throws, or i'd try to convince a teammate to stick around and play one on one. i'd carb load the night before a game and make sure i got 8 hours of sleep. i would abstain from drinking carbonation 24 hours before a game. one year i started taking ice baths every wednesday night to flush out my leg muscles mid-week. i had shin splints constantly, but figured out a routine of sports cream, tape jobs, and lots of ibuprofen that helped me get by. nothing could stand in my way. i never experienced a severe injury, but i'll never forget twisting my ankle pretty bad one time when we were playing our rival st. mike's at their house. i came out of the game, went to the end of the bench and had my trainer tape me up tight with mole skin. i was back in within 3 minutes of play time.

i ate up every second of every practice drill, line sprint, scrimmage, warm up routine, game, roadtrip - anything that had to do with basketball and the team. i loved road trips. because we were a private school, our district included schools in san antonio, san marcos, corpus, and waco. needless to say, we did lots of team bonding in 15 passenger vans. i was a team captain both junior and senior year. i was one of those vocal players - always talking up a storm on the court, either talking shit or trying to communicate with my teammates. every time i shot free throws, i had our cheerleaders do the same cheer [angel, angel on the rim, please let sarah put it in. put it in, put it in, put it in. whoo!]. i was in charge of our warm up music, but, thanks to donna mabe, my hp-approved options were fairly limited. we had our own real warm up music in the locker room, though, which consisted primarly of juvenile's back that ass up. it was all about the details. one year i even convinced our coach that we needed to get team shoes [which were hideous, in case you were wondering].

i wanted to play every second of every game. i wanted the team to win, and i wanted to be the best. i wasn't the best, but i suppose i put enough points on the board to get away with being cocky. one time we were playing incarnate word in corpus christy, and i was guarding this girl who called me a bitch. i went after her and was about to take a swing right when lindsey leaverton grabbed the back of my jersey and pulled me away. i used to love to stand back on the 3 point line when a girl from the other team was shooting a free throw so i could talk shit. i would try to make friends with the refs and would sneak in elbow jabs when i could. god, i hated players like me.

i'm nearly 26, and i still long for the glory days. i miss basketball. it made me feel so alive. my life revolved around it...almost.