A Letter To Me, From Me

Happy Friday! But honestly, kind of a depressing Friday.

I can’t open Twitter without seeing a bomb dropping portal announcement or coaching changes.

You couldn’t pay me to be a coach with the amount of restructuring that goes on nowadays. I hope coaches have received the equivalent of a cost of living adjustment to their salaries but a cost of team adjustment, adjustment for what they’ve been put through ever since the transfer portal regulations changed.

Gotta bring up Tara VanDerveer

I grew up watching her at a few Final Four games, but I was actually able to watch her final senior night game this season in Maples, and it was a phenomenal experience.

What a way to go out and a firm middle finger to the suit that decided to dismantle the Pac-12.

Today, I wrote a letter to the 10-year old me that grew up wanting to play college basketball and idolizing every player in the world.

[cue Brad Paisley ‘Letter To Me’]

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

TODAY’S STORY
💥 A LETTER TO ME

During this most recent basketball season, I had a thought about how my life would be different if I chose to continue pursuing my dreams of playing college basketball.

While this dream occupied my entire headspace for like 16 years, my fate was decided at birth.

I’m 5 foot 2 with a mother that is 4 foot 11. I was never playing any sport at the collegiate level.

But I was delusional and that didn’t stop me from emailing coaches trying to recruit myself.

Looking back, when I was sending those emails, I’m not sure I knew how to properly send an email.

I’d be willing to bet my emails were getting returned and I had no idea, or I was sending it to like a [email protected] email, praying it got to him.

✍️ My letter to a young, delusional Scottie

You didn’t make it, you never were, but you chose the right path.

You’re still obsessed with basketball, exclusively women’s college basketball, and it’s not just you anymore.

The world has flipped it’s head upside down, and is obsessed with women’s college basketball. Who woulda thought

With the mass adoption of interest, people now have some of the worst takes in the world and don’t know what they’re talking about, but now you sound less like a washed up basketball player that won’t let it go and more like the sounding board for all the hot takes flying in.

We always thought getting recruited to play college basketball would be the end goal. Remember making your own piggy bank but as a basketball and decorating it like a WNBA basketball? That was our future, so we thought!

I think it may even be in an old box buried somewhere at mom and dads house.

Outside of the loose change we put in there, we also wrote basketball goals and personal goals in there from when we made it age 10 until it was time to go off to college.

I think those goals had a 25% success rate overall.

Thinking about that now, I laugh. Because I was so excited to one day play in the WNBA and that’s what I told anyone that would listen, but getting older and caring what people thought, it was like the “the worst career move ever”.

It’s pathetic how a silly worldly view like that can change your perception about something you grew up idolizing, but overtime, we realized that wasn’t true. Funny enough, you’ll end up cancelling your dinner date and asking him to watch the WNBA finals game with you instead.

Ya still got it

Other than that, the game’s kinda changed.

Instead of being an 18 year old that plays basketball, you’re now an 18 year old that’s expected to cos-play a commercial actress on your social media pages. Plus, you’ve got to deal with a revolving door of teammates, and never ending public scrutiny for anything you do.

You wouldn’t have lasted.

But the good news is, you’ve still been a part of the game, probably too much, but we’re still having fun.

You’ve met coaches and players from all over, still getting a little stage fright each time, but holding ground.

You chose a different career path, but have somehow managed to insert basketball back into your life with this ol newsletter thing.

Our main goal growing up never happened of playing at a higher level.

But as we know now, it was mom’s fault, not yours. Nothing about your lack of shooting abilities. Nope

Basketball taught us a lot, and all of those learnings still carry with me today.

I could list out hundreds of examples of the way basketball has impacted my life, but in this moment right now, there’s one that seems a little bigger than the rest.

Paying it forward

The last couple of years playing basketball sucked.

I was a team captain and upperclassmen, something I had been waiting for for forever, but at my school, that meant that I didn’t just have a team looking up to me and expecting my best performance at all times, it also meant the town had this same expectation as well.

I was the team’s go-to person for both on the court and off the court needs, and I loved that, and had been waiting my whole life for this leadership to do just that, but dam did it take a toll on me in ways that nobody knew.

I don’t even think I knew in the moment.

But because we grew up with leaders and upperclassmen who did the same for us, we had a roadmap.

And it’s carried with me today and something that I strive to do each day.

My whole life I’ve done a lot of things that I don’t particularly love or want to be doing, but I know I need to, because someone did that for me, and I want to pay it forward.

I want the impact to be compounded over time.

I want to be the person that’s reliable and shows up.

And I can attribute that 110% to basketball.

Would never ever ever had made it as a collegiate basketball player, but the lessons this game has taught me are endless, and for that, I am forever grateful and indebted to the game.

Pay it forward, folks!

And that was an inside look of Scottie’s brain.

Don’t worry, we’ll get back to regular programming next week.

If you liked today’s story, shoot me a reply to this email.

If you hated it, send this to a friend and tell them how much you hated it.