The Welcoming Rites

After talking for a while, Brandon decided to change the topic.

“Anyway guys, today is the time where the freshmen would visit us and will apply for a membership. I hope they have at least half of the grit Keith showed us. We need those with fighting spirit out there.”

As some shoes squeaking sound coming from the entrance of the aula, Tony turns his head backward pointed his thumb toward the entrance.

“Speaking of which, here they come.”

A quite of numbers of freshman entered the sport aula. They had innocent looks on their face, which is pretty much exactly what we had a year ago. Right now, I wanted to talk with Carlos about our experience when we first arrived at this aula.

“It was just like us in the beginning, right?”

However, he didn’t manage to respond as our coach blew his whistle. Without further ado, we started to stand in rows before him. And of course, now it comes for the time for him to scold us for our mistakes during the scrimmage.

“Keith, don’t force yourself to take an unfavorable shot! If needed, you could even pass after faking a shot, pass the ball more!”

“Yes, sir!” I implied.

“Jake, rotate quicker! You have to contest every shot, even if it’s beyond three-point line. Don’t give your opponents a free look to the rim.”

“Alright, coach. I’ll do better next time.”

“And Carlos, you must widen your perspective. You shouldn’t assume that someone that performed ankle-breaking moves have the objective to get past you. There’s a possibility that he will go for a step-back, or even to pass a ball to someone else using his moves as a distraction, like Brandon just did earlier.”

Wait a second… Using yourself as a decoy before making a pass? That’s interesting… I never thought of that!

Oh wait, maybe I could make a play where I fake a drive to the hoop, before making a swift backward pass to my open teammate in three-point line… It will be crazy if I can pull two defenders to me and leaving that person wide open.

While I was pondering about that, the coach continues.

“As a playmaker, you need to make quick judgement and quick calls to your teammate. Don’t repeat this mistake on the court, you hear me?”

“Yes, coach.”

Oh… Looks like point-guards have it rough. On top of scoring, they have to make plays and be the team’s brain too. I mean, the only thing I thought about was either to score points or to prevent my matchup from scoring.

Hmm… I guess I’ll have to learn playmaking too, who knows if I can do some playmaking on top of my dunks and jump-shots? Perhaps I can be the ideal forward everyone dreamt of.

After a series of ‘advices’ from our coach, he told us to take a rest before he went to the newcomers. And yes, it’s about the time the coach starts to the process of screening whoever going to join our team.

We, the seniors, started to set the drill props for the freshman, which after we finished, the coach gave us stopwatch and asked us to time them as he watches their movements in the drill practices.

While the drills are underway, all the bench players in our team are looking upward to one thing: the scrimmage against the recruits which comes next.

The pent-up frustration of being inferior player, overshadowed by the starters is building up among us the bench players. And now, beating these newcomers down is like a cure for our inferiority complex that delivered to our doorstep.

Not to mention, our losses in the training scrimmage just now fueled our desire to crush these newbies up. The urge to demolish our juniors thoroughly is running thick in my vein… No… Probably it goes for every bench player here… 

Suddenly I came to a realization, this is what our seniors went through last year, as we were getting smashed away by the bench team.

Like a rite, a spiritual ritual that new members have to go through before joining the ranks, this seemingly “bullying” start making sense to me. We are a wall they ought to surpass in order to earn immediate playtime in the roster.

If they perform well here, they will earn some playing minutes. They don’t have to beat us, basically they just have to give a good fight to show themselves going to be useful in real match despite all the pressure.

Likewise, if they crumble here, they will end up in my situation last year where I could only sit in the bench, not playing in real match.

In comparison to other sports, basketball is quite cruel in term of competition for the roster.

Unlike soccer, which you have 11 players on the field and having at least another 11 that “has” chance to play depending on situation, basketball is played by 5 people and having extra 7 on the bench, anything extra is just reserve which is not allowed to play in the said game.

Plus, you can only register up to 15 players at most, which means at most 10 spare players to use in a cup. In that way, the extra 3 on reserve may not be able to play at all if someone didn’t have an injury, like how I got my time as Sean was injured last year.

Depending on someone’s grit and patience, people may decide to drop if they keep getting in reserve, like how Alex left us. I’m actually grateful that I kept trying and finally end up where I’m at now.

However, not only this scrimmage is important for the newcomers, we, the bench players also get tested here. Just like how Carlos beat Ryan fair and square and snatched the sixth-man slot under his belt, they can steal our position from us if we performed worse than those “wet-behind-the-ears”.

Now that I’m in their shoes, I understand why our seniors seemed to going all out to demolish us, me, Carlos and Jamal when we first get here last year.

As someone who shed blood, sweat, and tears to get a mere few minutes of playtime, I ain’t gonna let those greenhorns to take away my slot. Hell, I wouldn’t let go a single minute I managed to clench into.

I worked so hard to get here, and no way I gonna back down without a fight. They can have my spot over my dead body.

I vividly remember what Brandon said to Carlos while chuckling last year.

"Ha-ha-ha. I'm not giving you my place, not while I'm still enrolled here."

So that’s what he meant… Huh… For sure, not just you, I ain’t letting my juniors to take over my spot too.

After I done with my thoughts, I looked at Carlos’s face, and oh geez, he is raring to go, I smirked while nudging him as I ask him a question with such an obvious answer, just to hype my buddy even more.

“Carlos, are you looking forward to ‘that’?”

“Hell, yeah! I can’t wait to show them who’s boss. It’s time to unleash our inner mamba.” He responded back with a smile.

“Right! Let’s give those recruits a run for their money.” I clenched my fist upward.

We looked to each other, before laughing like a madman. The freshmen looked at us with confusion, but we didn’t care about that. After all, those poor people don’t know what will hit them.

“Let’s dismantle them tho-ro-ough-ly…” I stroke my fist into my palm twice as I looked toward the freshmen, ready to pounce on them.

And now… The bomb is ticking down, waiting to explode at any given moment.