For as long as I can remember, I’ve told my kids the same thing.
“Don’t grow up…”
“…it’s a trap.”
They usually roll their eyes. Oliver has started doing it too. And honestly, I don’t blame them. Because from a kid’s perspective, adulthood looks pretty great. You get to do all the fun “big kid” stuff and you stop hearing “no, because you are too little”. Nobody wants to be too little and everyone wants to feel like they are filling a big space in the world!
Grown ups get to drive…stay up as late as you want…eat dessert first if you feel like it…nobody tells you it’s bedtime.
Then one day, boom, adulthood. And it’s soooooo anticlimactic.
Suddenly you’re excited because the grocery store has your favorite coffee creamer on sale. Your back hurts because you slept wrong. You develop a love of bird watching and have in-depth conversations with your other “grown up” friends about hummingbird migration and when to put out your feeders. (Or is that just me?) And somehow your calendar starts looking like a game of Tetris that always has the blocks about one or two rows from busting out the top.
Turns out…Growing up REALLY IS kind of a trap.
But the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized life isn’t the only place I’ve seen traps. Some of my favorite moments on a basketball court happened in one.
I loved a good trap defense.
There was something incredibly satisfying about watching two defenders work together to force a ball handler into a corner. The sideline becomes another defender. The baseline closes off the escape. It’s all about being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
I can still hear Coach Carla Crowder screaming “BEKKA” across the practice gym if I was even half a step late closing the trap. She knew what she was teaching me. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time. Closing the gap. Because if you don’t, the whole trap falls apart. And usually, the other team took advantage and scored a basket that could change the whole trajectory of the game. A lesson that I take with me into my big girl life on a regular basis.
Because with a beautifully executed trap, suddenly, the player has nowhere to go.
The trap worked exactly the way it was designed to.
Of course, if you were the one with the basketball…It felt completely different.
Because good players learn something early. The trap doesn’t start in the corner. It starts several dribbles before you ever get there.
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It starts the moment you quit paying attention.
The moment you lower your head.
The moment you stop seeing the whole floor.
That’s when you’re really in trouble.
Life has a funny way of setting traps too.
Some look like opportunities. Some look like distractions. Some look like success. Some even look like comfort.
Sometimes we get trapped by trying to please everyone, comparing ourselves to everyone else, saying “yes” when everything inside us is screaming “NO”, or by believing we’re the only ones who can carry the load.
And before we know it…
We’ve dribbled ourselves into the corner.
Basketball taught me something else. The best players don’t escape traps. They anticipate them.
Keep your head up.
Don’t panic.
Trust your teammates.
Look for the open pass.
Don’t force something that isn’t there.
And maybe most importantly…
Don’t dribble yourself into places you never needed to be in the first place.
The older I get, the more I realize those lessons had very little to do with basketball.
They’re about marriage. Friendships. Leadership. Parenting. Faith. Work. Life.
Maybe that’s why I still tell my kids…”Don’t grow up…it’s a trap.”
Not because adulthood isn’t wonderful.
It is. Most of the time.
But because life will always try to back you into a corner.
The trick isn’t avoiding every trap.
It’s learning to recognize one before you’re standing in the middle of it.
And that’s how the ball really bounces.
Read more from How the Ball Bounces with Bekka in the archives at www.mysaline.com/bounces.
About the author: Bekka Wilkerson is a lifelong lover of all things sports. Raised in a super athletic household it was no surprise when she too began to love sports at a young age. It seems like from the time she could walk she had a softball bat in her hands, but her true athletic passion came from all things Basketball. That love served her well as a Bryant High School Lady Hornet and ultimately earned her a full scholarship to play at the University of Central Arkansas – among many other adventures.
These days Bekka can be found running around Saline County with her husband, Speedy, or chasing one of her grandsons. She is also the Executive Director of The EMpact One Foundation, a Saline County Nonprofit Organization that helps young people stay connected to extracurricular activities through tuition assistance and equipment provisions.
Reach out to Bekka with questions and/or ideas about things you want to see in this column at [email protected] and learn more about The EMpact One Foundation at www.empactone.org.
