Sporting memories: Going a bit nuts supporting my sister

My family was very geared towards participating in sports and we were encouraged to play almost everything from a very young age. My parents were very active in getting us involved in whatever they could and all of the kids ended up being quite good at a lot of different sports. Two of us went on to get athletic scholarships and this made the family very proud. I'm not ashamed to say that while I wish I had been the best, my athleticism was easily overshadowed by my older sister who was the true phenom of the family. She was far more dedicated to her primary sport of basketball than the rest of us were.

While I was doing teenage things like really digging into videogames and going to parties, my sister was going to training camps, getting special shoes that were meant to improve your vertical, and practicing nonstop at getting better and better at her craft.

It was a good thing she was successful because she kind of inspired the rest of us to aspire to greatness as well and for the most part it worked. We all supported her so much in what she did as a family and sometimes this resulted in me feeling the pain of a loss on the part of her basketball team perhaps even more than she did. We were ravenous in our support of her and there was one day in particular that I can't believe I had the guts to do, and I also can't believe that the officials let me do it looking back.

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The above image is obviously not us, but there is a bit of a tradition in basketball that the "home court advantage" is created by the fans. Fans who will do anything that they can to give their team an edge. One of the thing that they do when there are seats at the ends of a stadium is that they will attempt to distract any player that is taking free-throws.

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Again, this is obviously not us or me in these pictures. This was a long time ago in the early 90's and we didn't have digital cameras for several years at that point. The stadium in question was also a high school stadium and didn't even have seating at the ends like this.

In the game that I can remember as if it happened yesterday, it was a regional final and two of the best teams in the state were in the same region. However, only one of them gets to advance to the state tournament. The game was extremely close and we were worried that our side was going to get eliminated before they even got a chance to go to the big game. Towards the end of the game when there were free throws I ran out onto the court but still out of bounds and basically did jumping jacks on the side of the court under the basket. Fans are not allowed in this area but nobody did anything about it. I would imagine that the opposing coach had a problem with me doing this but nobody made me stop.

Thinking back on it I am pretty embarrassed about this because it was just me, and the gym, which probably only seated a couple hundred people maximum, was totally packed. There I was, on the side of the court during a high-school game, waving my arms, shouting like a loon, and doing my best to distract the free-throw shooter. I remember when she missed one and the crowd went wild cheering for ME. Even at that point the referees did nothing to make me stop. They probably should have and I hope that my sister remembers this day as well as the day that her brother made a fool of himself to do anything he could to help her team win.

They did end up winning the game in the end and I think my antics only resulted in one free throw being missed which might have been missed anyway even if I hadn't run out there. My sister's team ended up going to the State tournament, where they absolutely dominated everyone the faced, winning the final by around 20 points. It's crazy to think that they, clearly a very good team, almost didn't even get to participate in the State tournament at all that year because of this one game.

I think back on that day with a sense of shame but also with a sense of pride. I cared enough about my sister to put myself out there like that and face ridicule and possibly even some sort of consequences for violating the rules of a game that I wasn't even a participant in.

I don't recall my sister ever having the same level of support towards me and my game of soccer, which I also went to college for free for excelling at. I don't hold this against her though because at least in America, soccer was then considered very boring and the only reason that I got a scholarship was likely because the universities are required to offer athletic scholarships for all sports, not just the popular ones.

While I ended up being listed as "All State" meaning that I was considered to comprise the best players for a single state in the newspapers, my sister had the same honor but completely one-upped me by being listed as one of the best players in the entire nation, 2nd squad. She nearly went to the Olympics and ended up setting records at the high school and her college that still exist to this day. So yeah, she was a bit better at her sport than I was at mine.

The crazy things we do for sport, eh?