La Cancha. The Court.

I’ve come to welcome blisters on my hands. Blisters mean I played wheelchair basketball, that I played hard, was part of a team…and that I smiled.

Basketball has unexpectedly woven itself through my auto-biography. When I was 15, new to Berkeley High, I made my first friend (shout out to K-Dawg) through basketball. When I studied abroad in Ghana, I started having a richer experience once the University of Ghana women’s team began their season. Wheelchair basketball became a thread through my college years. At BORP I found an extended family, I found my favorite father figure, and my partner in crime, all from just playing around with kids, wheelchairs, and basketballs.

If I had to write an auto-biography, playing wheelchair basketball in Antigua with the Transitions team would be a new chapter, if only because the setting deserves its own section. Our basketball court just happens to sit 50 feet away from Spanish ruins. So the backdrop as we play is unreal.

We practice/play every Friday afternoon. Afternoons here, often mean rain. So today, when it began to pour, we rolled under some bushes to serve as our umbrella. However, soon thereafter, everyone started pulling everyone else out into the rain. Our play continued with more water, and more laughter.