Just Like Yusuke
Mahiro Fukushima PD4-5
“Do you want to play basketball?” That was a question that changed me. Since that day, I’ve been playing ball for 5 years. I sometimes wonder, “What would I be doing right now if I didn’t start playing this sport?”
I remember the first day I met someone that played basketball, and was interested. I was in second grade, in Japan. I didn’t play any sports. I wasn’t athletic or tall. I had been thinking about playing a sport, but the decisions were between soccer and baseball. Then, one day my classmate, Yusuke Kudo, came up to me and said something shocking. “Do you want to play basketball?” he said. Basketball wasn’t a popular sport in Japan. I knew what “basketball” was but I didn’t know if I was interested in it. “I don’t know… I’ll think about it.” I replied….
When I got there, I was startled at what I saw. People were running around the gym, doing pushups, situps and 100 dribbles. I could hear the loud bouncing sounds of the orange balls and feel the whole gym shaking. There were 2nd to 6th graders. As I was worried about what I just saw, the coach came up to me and greeted me. “Hi, Im the coach of this team! Nice to meet you.”
The team did their ordinary handling and shooting drills for warm up. I was very excited to be on the team, but was also very nervous. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. I could hear the sound of my heartbeat. I didn’t get to practice with the whole team because I was new. I was practicing my dribble in the corner, when the coach yelled, ?Everyone come to the center! We’re playing a…