In 1991, I was in eighth grade.
speaker extraordinaire, and student-athlete.”
The legendary Coach Somerville wanted me to play basketball at
Bishop McNamara so he began to recruit me. Every time our phone
would ring, I’d make sure to pick it up first in case it was for me. I
was an athlete — a basketball player at that — and I wanted nothing
more than to see my name up in the rafters at Bishop McNamara.
We won that year, by the way — and not just the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Championship. We were WCAC champs
and Washington, D.C. champs. I was part of one of the most memorable runs in our school’s history, but for most of the games I was
relegated to the bench.
As a self-assured freshman in high school, I, like many of my peers,
sought to define myself. I was on the basketball team so, naturally,
I limited myself to be a basketball player. I placed myself in a very
narrow classification that not only limited my desire to explore the
world outside, but also kept me from discovering my other talents.
It hurt emotionally not to play in any of the championship games,
but in my time at Bishop McNamara, I’d learned about family, selflessness, and what I really wanted out of life. If the team needed me
on the bench, then there I’d stay cheering louder than anyone else
at the game.
As I progressed as both a student and as an athlete, however, my
rigorous boundaries of what I
was and what I was not began to
weaken. Interacting with my diverse classmates of all ethnic and
economic backgrounds worked
to break through my more set assumptions about my local community, for one.
When I left Bishop McNamara for H[