Break-Up With Basketball: Staffer’s experience getting cut from basketball as a senior

As I walked into Coach Archer’s office on the last day of basketball tryouts, I never expected my plan for this year would be in tatters when I walked out. The precedent for as long as I’ve been at East was that seniors don’t get cut. Sure, maybe I shouldn’t have gone into tryouts with that mindset, but that was why I was so shocked when Archer said there wouldn’t be room for me on the team this year. My heart immediately sank. I’ve played basketball since I was five years old, and imagining my life without it brought on an immense feeling of pain through the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. 

Denial: How could this happen? No one believed me when I told them I got cut. It wasn’t until my mom could hear me completely bawling my eyes out over the phone that she realized I wasn’t kidding. I’ve poured my heart and soul into this program the past three years, so getting cut at year four felt like a knife through my back. It didn’t seem real. All I was left with was the last memory I had of shooting a basketball on the East court, feeling that orange, leather ball between my fingers, not knowing it would be my last. 

Anger: With almost everything else stripped away from my senior year, basketball was supposed to be the bit of normalcy I would get despite the pandemic. But it was taken away from me by a coach who called me “his favorite player.” How does that make sense? I wanted to hate the coaches; I wanted to get them fired. However, I wasn’t just angry at them — I also couldn’t help but point the finger towards myself. I was wracking my brain, trying to figure out what I did wrong, what I did to deserve this. 

Bargaining: I created a lot of “what if” and “if only” statements in my head. “What if I had tried harder in tryouts?”, “If only there had been less seniors trying out.” I formulated ways to potentially get back on the team, but the coaches could only offer me a manager position. I didn’t give everything to this program my entire high school career just to finish with what seemed like a pitiful participation award. So I declined the offer. It would have been nice to still see the girls I had grown up playing with, but I would have been miserable watching everyday what could have been.

Depression: I have never felt the type of sadness I felt in the days after getting cut. The feeling of rejection left me heartbroken. I dropped lower and lower with each word of Taylor Swift’s breakup song, “All Too Well,” blaring through my speaker. She’d been dumped by Jake Gyllenhaal, and I’d been dumped by basketball. Barely making out the words between each tear and sniffle, I not only hated the world, but thought the world hated me. 

Acceptance: Accepting this decision was no easy task — how could I let go of something that had such a big impact on my life? Hanging out with friends and forcing myself to forget helped ease the sadness, but it wasn’t until I was able to start picturing my life without basketball that I was able to try and move on. Without basketball, I’ve decided to try other things that have sparked my interest, like trying out for the musical or fostering a dog. Accepting the coaches’ decision was the only way I could truly move on and start to make myself happy again. 

Grief doesn’t necessarily ever go away. There will be days when all the pain comes rushing back: I have to remind myself, it’s ok to be sad. In the meantime, I keep my score sheet from tryouts hung on my mirror as a reminder that you can’t expect anything in life — you have to earn it. The world works in mysterious ways, and I can only hope this was meant to be. And even though this year hasn’t turned at all the way I planned, I get through it each day by remembering there’s so much more to life than basketball.