Building my Coliseum
By: Carlos Garcia
Tags: Fullfillment, Motivation, Bullying, Confidence, Body Image

Three, two, one. The buzzer goes off and a roaring crowd buzzes in a packed coliseum that only lives in my brain. It’s a space that no one can disturb and where all my thoughts roam free or don’t roam at all. It’s the same space every time I step on a basketball court and it’s the only place where I truly feel invincible. I’m 25 now, and I’ve regained this special structure and environment in my mind as an adult. The love for the game was there as a child but I was also busy trying to figure out who I was. I played flag football, skated, bmxed, dirt bike, airsofted, and did tae kwon do. I was a curious child who wanted to try everything and It wasn’t until high school that I tried to focus on basketball and develop my skills further. But highschool basketball tore down my coliseum because it beat my confidence and self-esteem to a point that basketball was no longer a love and more of a chore. Its destruction was a result of constant body shaming from highschool staff and teammates which resulted in a mental shift and self deterioration that would take years to recover from.

Right before the school year started I was a part of a summer basketball program that all freshmen joined if they wanted a better shot to be on the basketball team. On the first day of practice at 110 pounds and an unimpressive 5 foot 3 inches, I stepped through the doors of the gym, nicknamed the brick house because of its brick structure, and walked to center court before anyone had arrived. I could feel the goosebumps rise as I imagined a packed house yelling and rumbling every inch of the gym. Crowds calling my name and cameras flashing in every direction. It was my dream and I was on a mission to be the best player Canyon, my high school, had ever seen. That summer, my team was awful and I can put a lot of that blame on myself. I had an ego and selfishness instilled in my head that didn’t allow me to cultivate a sense of trust among the team. In my head I was the best player and everyone else wasn’t worth my time so I had to shoot everything if we were to ever have a chance of winning. One time I was so frustrated that I yelled at my coach and told him that “we suck and we’re never gonna get better!”. A lot of that came from my father because he thought I was also the best player and he would constantly say that we never had a chance. He was focused on me becoming the best that I could be but he never taught me how to be a teammate and it wasn’t until after high school that I would learn that lesson. Overall, I still had a lot of fun that summer and made a lot of great friends and luckily the bullying and body shaming hadn’t started yet.

Freshman year was rough and I think we may have won 4 games total. After the season I found a personal coach and I would practice every weekend with him and a group of others on our skills. They were all bigger than me and would push me around a lot but I could beat all of them in a shooting competition hands down. I learned a lot from those groups of guys and I’m happy I got to experience that. Sometimes I still see them around the pickup courts and we play a couple of games which is nice. The summer going into my sophomore year was probably one of the best basketball summers I’ve ever had but it was also the beginning of the body-shaming I would experience for the rest of my high school basketball career. The first time I broke down was after a workout with a personal coach. As a group, we were all lifting all sorts of weights and I brought my friend along to workout as well. I was the weakest and could barely lift the 45-pound bar for bench press. They began to laugh, including the coach, and make fun of how small I was. Saying things like “wow I don’t think I’ve ever really met anyone who was almost a buck oh five. I mean you’re like 5 pounds more but you’re essentially a buck oh five.”I was embarrassed and I really couldn’t take it. I brought my friend along so i had to take him back home and as we waited for my dad to pick me up I cried with my friend by my side. Things got worse when the school year actually began because I almost didn’t make the basketball team because of my size.

Tryouts were a week-long and even though you did summer camp, it was never a guarantee that you would make the team. Halfway through the week, my personal coach pulls me aside and says that there’s a good chance I won’t make the team. But he believed in me and said he would vouch for me. That was comforting but I felt like I needed to earn my spot rather than have someone vouch for my spot on the team. The next two days didn’t go well and I was sure that I wouldn’t see my name on the roster that Friday. Friday came and as I scanned the list I saw my name. I was filled with so much emotion that I ran to the outside back of the gym and cried. I couldn’t believe that I had made the team. I didn’t cry because I was happy, I cried because in my head, I didn’t earn that spot.

I rode the bench most of sophomore year but towards the end, I earned a starting spot. I felt confident but I still saw myself as a stick when I looked in the mirror. I told myself I would get stronger and bigger and that would really improve my game. But it actually did the opposite. As I focused more on lifting I focused less on my shooting and as a result, it began to deteriorate. My form went wacky and I lost confidence in my shooting ability. But still, I continued to lift weights. The body-shaming also continued as I got comments from the head varsity coach and his assistant that I was just too weak, too small, too slow. It was terrible to hear that from people who you thought knew best because it made it that much more true in your head. There was also a situation where the scorekeeper that volunteered for games commented on my ankle thickness. She made fun of them because they were so thin and just laughed at the idea of how skinny they were. There was also a time where a varsity player put their biceps against my legs and the team began to make fun of how his biceps were bigger. I slowly began to fall into this deep depression where I would look at myself in the mirror and hate what I looked like. Why did I look this way, and why couldn’t I just be normal-sized like everyone else. I mean I tried every day to get stronger but it was never enough.

My senior year came and by that point, my shooting ability that I once had was now completely gone. I had focused so much on lifting weights that I forgot how to shoot the basketball. The one thing in basketball that I was exceptional at was just gone as a result of a constant barrage of insults and mockery. I hit a low and I almost quit the team. I had it in my head and I walked into the gym to tell my coach that I was gonna quit. He walked me down the stairs to the locker and I would never forget what he said to me. “You quit now, and you quit for the rest of your life”. So I finished the year off but I still never gained my shooting ability back. The season ended and I remember that I was so relieved that I would never have to play basketball again. I would just focus on my body and become super strong and super fit. It was draining and honestly, it was boring. It was the same thing over and over again. It just wasn’t my thing to get buff and bigger. Yeah sure I would look fit and maybe girls would notice but I mean who cares? I realized that I missed basketball. I missed that feeling of being able to shoot lights out. So I began to train again.

I trained hard by myself and eventually, I found a trainer that would help me get in shape and increase my skill for the community college basketball team. I would wake up every Saturday at 3 am to train at 5 am. Right after the training sessions, I would go to work at big 5 where my feet would hurt so badly that it would be hard to stand. I did those training sessions for 2 months and I learned a lot but unfortunately, they wouldn’t pay off. One week before the tryouts I went to my local sports complex to play basketball only to get injured and not be able to try out. It was devastating but it was ok because it allowed me to focus on my classes a lot more. I was taking a lot of difficult math and physics classes at the time such as linear algebra, and physics of electricity and magnetism, so you can only imagine the amount of time required to do well in those courses. In the end, my degree was more important than making a basketball team. But my dreams of getting my shot back didn’t stop. Those times were when my space in my head began to re blossom. The coliseum in my head began to fill with cheering people. The cameras began to flash. And my self-confidence and invincibility began to develop. I fell in love with the game and a ball that went through a hoop. As a result, I also began to love my body and who I was because I learned that no one can tell me who to be or what to look like. I am who I am and there’s nothing that anybody can do about it.

Fast forward to today and I still love the game. It’s hard because of the coronavirus but every day I find time to work on my shot. I sleep with a black Wilson on my bed and right before bed I always make sure that I get a few form shots in by laying on the bed and shooting upwards towards the ceiling. The shot still isn’t perfect but It’s definitely getting there.

As a kid in high school, I took the comments to heart and it obscured my perception of my body. No matter how much I lifted or how much I ate, I felt that it was never enough and I needed it to do more. I lost my identity and tried to become someone that I was never built to be. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. They can be your teammates on a team or the ones you think you can trust like your coaches and supervisors at a school. My lesson to those that have reached this far is to care for those around you and accept everyone for who they are. It’s not the right of others to criticize a body or mind they do not understand. And if you’re the one being mocked or made fun of, please make sure to reach out to those that you trust. A mother, a father, or a friend or a cousin no matter who it is always make sure to talk about it. I promise it makes all the difference. So go find your coliseum, make it your own, and never let anyone tear it down because it’s always the last line of defense against those that are too weak to build their own.