The Third Year
Anthony Harbin
 Coach Henry told me that I would be his starting point guard up coming season at Schoolcraft College. I didn’t know what to expect but I knew I was ready. Basketball practices were getting worse everyday and school was getting tough too.
My teammates were all incoming freshman so I had more college experiences than everyone. The advantage they had over me was they all had fresh legs. I felt like an old man because I wasn’t able to move like I used too. I still could get the job done. We lost our first game of the season. We played a team that was ranked high. My teammates didn’t really stress out about that lost because we knew we were capable of beating them. The second game came around and we had to travel all the way up to Alpena Michigan. We won by one point and it was a pretty lucky game. One of our coaches was real hard on everyone on the team. He would scream at me and my teammates and would tell us we were horrible. It was making everyone hate playing for this coach. I knew all he was trying to do is motivate us.
After our second win, we went on a ten game losing streak. I was getting very frustrated because I had never been on a team that had lost so many games. I felt like I played for the Detroit Lions; like I was cursed. The good thing was that I was maintaining a 3.0 average and staying out of trouble.
We kept on losing game after game and we weren’t getting better at all. We had one game where one of my players was arguing with my coach and my teammate threw a chair at him and hit my assistant coach. My teammate was kicked off the team and we just were falling apart. Going into the second semester we lost four players due to grades and were down to seven players. The past few games I was getting winded real easy. I went to the hospital and next thing you know I was diagnosed with a very irregular heart beat. The doctor told me I wasn’t able to play basketball anymore and this problem needed to get addressed.
The whole month of January I was in and out of the hospital. My teammates were now down to six players and the chances of us winning another game wasn’t likely. The beginning of February I had an operation on my heart that put me out for a week. Once I left the hospital my doctor cleared me to play. The athletic director of the school, Sidney Fox was telling me “don’t risk it.” I told him that I wanted to help my teammates out. I also told one of my teammates that we were going to win at least one more game.
I had returned to the court with about four games left. I didn’t expect to do a lot because I had been recovering from surgery. We lost the first two games when I came back by a lot, but I did contribute a little. The third game we won. Even though everyone was used to losing every game, that one win felt like we won the championship. We lost the last game of the season and our coaches decided to withdraw from the playoffs.
I had been through a lot this season. This season was a lesson for me and taught me that I should never give up. I was thankful and decided that I was going to be done with basketball and focus on finishing up school.
I am currently getting ready to graduate from Schoolcraft College in May. I am also going to transfer back to Eastern Michigan to finish up with a major in entrepreneurship.
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