When I sit back and reflect on the major areas of my life that made me who I am today, I cannot help but think about how paramount sports have been in shaping my character. I began to play sports around the age of five, and while that was important, it was obviously not even near the impact that playing high school basketball had on me. Not only did playing in high school make me a tremendous amount better at the game of basketball, but it also taught me numerous lessons to carry throughout my life. Throughout my years in high school, most of all, my coach stressed the importance of accountability, doing work early, and toughness, all of which play an essential role in my life today.

Looking back, choosing to attend the high school that I did, Seattle Prep, was one of the most influential decisions of my life. I had three very solid options in my area as far as schools to choose from, but I felt that Seattle Prep would be the best of everything for me. I had already known the head basketball coach there, Coach Kelly, and having someone like him to help guide me through life at Prep was one of the main reasons I went there.

Along with being the head basketball coach, he is also the Assistant Principal of Student Life at the school, so not only does he care for his players on the court but also shows just as much support off the court. One of the main things that he would stress to us on and off the court was what he called “doing your work early.” Off of the court, this meant that if we had a game coming up soon, we started studying maybe a day or two earlier than normal to stay ahead, even with our busy schedules. Early on in my freshman year, I was not great at doing my work early in the classroom, and my grades somewhat showed.

Fast forward to basketball season later that year, and along with Coach Kelly’s advice, I started doing my work earlier, and it showed. This is something that has definitely changed me for the better and is something that I will continue to do throughout not only my college career but my entire life as well. This principle will be one of the deciding factors in how well I do in school, especially during basketball season, so it is very helpful that I had learned to do this in high school.

Playing basketball for Coach Kelly, along with teaching me to do my work early, also taught me how to be accountable. For the four years that I played basketball at Seattle Prep, accountability had always been a theme for our team, or as we called them “big rocks.” It didn’t matter if you were a senior and the best player on the team or a freshman that barely played, we were all held to the same standards, which were very high. For example, we had a saying within our team of not going “palms up,” which meant that when faced with adversity– keep your head up and keep playing– rather than getting overly frustrated about making mistakes. In practice, if one of us made a turnover or missed a shot we probably should have made and we showed frustration, our coaches would stop practice and make us run, all because someone went “palms up.” Over the years, this taught me to accept accountability for my actions and accountability for keeping myself level-headed.

Another aspect of accountability that was important to our basketball program was ensuring that others were always the best versions of themselves so that you could be the best version of yourself. This did not start becoming important to our team until my junior year, but the results were immediately noticeable. We had this word called “Ubuntu,” which is an ancient African word that means “I am because of you,” and we took this to mean that we were able to be our best selves because each one of our teammates were their best selves as well. This taught me to hold my teammates accountable to be at their best while also holding myself accountable to be at my best. For me, this also translated immediately into the academic side of my life because by bringing consistent effort in the classroom and making sure I was my best self every single day, my grades began to improve, which took some stress off of the other areas of my life.

The last value that I was taught throughout my high school basketball career was toughness, both mentally, and physically. One of the main things we did that represented toughness to me was having weight training set for 7:45 am each Saturday, even after many tough games on Friday nights. In our league, we played two games a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, and on Fridays, our games were not scheduled to start until 8:30 pm. Often times, our games would not end up starting until 8:45 or 9:00 because there were three games to be finished before us, so we usually would not leave the gym until around 11:00. By the time each of us got back home, showered, ate dinner, and finally went to bed, it would be around 12:30. To me, this preached toughness because in order to be a great team, we had to be willing to do some things that others are not willing to do. For our team, this was lifting weights at 7:45 on Saturdays and then practicing afterwards, no matter how bad our bodies were hurting from the night before. This value of toughness is something that I will always take with me in life because doing things that others just simply do not want to do provides a much better chance of being successful not only in sports, but in life as well.

Sports have been absolutely essential in my development as a person, and I honestly do not know where I would be today without them, specifically basketball. There are so many life lessons to be learned in the sport, so I can honestly say that it has changed me for the better for the rest of my life. I was able to see myself grow and get better on the court each and every day, and was also able to see growth in my personality off of the court, which arguably was more important to me. If not for Coach Kelly and the basketball program at Seattle Prep, I would have had a much more difficult time learning the values of toughness, accountability, and the importance of doing my work early. These values are things that apply to every aspect of my life, so I will be sure to carry them with me throughout the rest of my life.

Nic Lynch