Love and Basketball

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Talent is an accident of genes - and a responsibility. Alan Rickman

Ebay and I had fun reading over Gerb’s post about Ashley.

When both Ashley and Ebay were little people, we also lived in Gerb’s neighborhood and Ashley and Ebay were buddies. Ebay says that he feels a little bit responsible for Ashley’s great basketball career – like he helped a little bit.

He helped because Ashley always wanted to shoot hoops and would recruit Ebay for games of HORSE. Ebay would oblige and…..lose every single time. Eventually he refused to play HORSE and would only play PIG so he could get the butt-kicking over with a little faster. Ebay likes to think that it helped to Boost Ashley’s basketball confidence to kick his trash every day. It helped to validate that she had some mad basketball skills and should definitely keep it up and definitely move on to more challenging HORSE opponents than Ebay. I think it also helped Ebay to realize that sports just weren’t going to be his thing and he should keep up the search for is own talent.

I’ve been thinking since reading that post that it’s nice when your interests and your talents converge. Ashley loved basketball even as a little kid, and luckily she has the physical affinity to be great at it too. Not that she didn’t practice her little blond head off, I’m just saying she had the brain and the body to mix with all that hard work to be a really good ball player. It’s harder when you love something, but don’t have the talent for it – whether mental or physical.

If, for example, I had wanted to be a world-class ballerina, it probably wouldn’t have been in the cards for me. Even if I had started dancing at 3 years old and dance danced every day for the next 20 years, I would probably still not have joined the ranks of prima ballerinas…unless there was a famous ballet about Hobbits. But I'll bet I would have learned a lot along the way.

I think if you have love for something you should keep doing it, talent or not, because sometimes just the effort is everything and you never know where it will lead. But when talent, ability and a love for something come together – it really is a beautiful thing.

Way to go Ashley.