Hello and welcome to my first ever blog on "Ballin' Up With B-rad"! This blog will be about my journey to become and better basketball player, and all the steps, measures, determination, and skill it takes to make it happen. This really all came about by way of Community Center League basketball, and also just playing pick-up or recreational games in general, so that I would not only improve my own talent as a basketball player, but also have more fun playing as a result of that. However, this is all only possible because of our opportunity of 20-Time, where 20% of our school time for a few-months-long period is given as free time to do whatever we choose and create a relevant goal for ourselves.
This being my first post I have yet really encounter much of anything yet in my journey, but I still have plenty to speculate on and be excited for. During this week I got together with my partners (Jimmy McDonald and Samir Bahadur) to plan and formulate a schedule for which we could improved certain aspects of our game. So we are planning to use our class time for this project to practice free throws, three-pointers, layups, and finally 1 on 1 tests (to see who is improving the most). While we do not yet have it locked in, I am hoping that Mr. Keith Schulte will be willing to supervise; although, I'm pretty sure that'll be the extent of his role because his basketball skills may need some of their own work. Essentially, every class time our group will be planning to go the gym and use our time to practice or work-out a certain, predetermined aspect of the game (chosen from one on the list above).
As far as progress, as I have mentioned, we have really only been able to set up a rough schedule of different skills to practice. On the other hand, our setbacks have been quite impactful. For one, while Jimmy had everything together and planned so that Alec Marty, star point guard and quarterback for our own Dow High, would mentor and teach us ways that we could improve our game, this idea was shot down by our teacher, Mrs. Hechlik. I was shocked personally that she had first of all never heard of one of Dow's best athletes, and even more so that she suggested that we should attempt to get a "Michigan State basketball player" to mentor us. This is simply impossible. Especially with March Madness coming up where they will be in a serious and focused mindset in order to fight their way the farthest in the tournament, certainly without time to help a lowly group of average players for no benefit of their own...
Also, we may be setback by the inevitable fact that we probably won't be able to practice/work-out in the gym for our class time. This will be very disappointing if it is true because we were actually promised that we could do anything when our project was first presented to us, and therefore our group rightfully assumed that this included the ability to use the gym to improve our game. While I would be a bit less excited and ambitious towards this project if true, I still look forward to being able to improve my game through an array of different methods.
Below is a link that provides solid resources on how to better shoot free throws, which our group will be focusing on improving this upcoming week.
http://www.usab.com/youth/news/2012/04/your-complete-guide-to-shooting-free-throws.aspx
Ballin' up this week and many more,
Brad
