Play Your Passion – Lil Black Boy to a Man
In high school I proved I could accomplish anything I wanted to. I was a student leader (I served as the student rep to the mayor), I was an accomplished academic (AP Courses & the Gifted Program) and I was an athlete. I want to talk about the the athlete portion of it.
As a little black boy they put a football and basketball in your hands and say go become a millionaire. To tell a little about me my first sport was baseball. I went the entire first season without a single hit. I honestly was scared of the ball. Something must have happened the next school year. I came back in the spring with a vengeance. I think it had a little to do with my kid brother coming to my league. I became a beast. I was #2 in the league in stolen bases and even hit for the cycle. I loved sports. Then I moved on to the more traditional negro sports. I spent an entire summer in basketball camp. The fact that I was now 5’7 1/2 going into the 7th grade didn’t hurt. I played with passion. My role model was Dennis Rodman as a young player. I wanted to play defense & get rebounds. I was a scrapper.
I had no desire to play football but everyone else was doing. I might as well had jumped off a bridge. At this point of my life I started having a slight ego. Football was fun for the fact that I liked hitting people and showing who was the Alpha Male. The problem is there wasn’t much finesse for me. Not only was there not enough swagger, people couldn’t see me behind the mask. I am too good looking not to be seen. Seriously though there was not enough variety for me. You played your position and that was it.
At this point I was transitioning to high school and experimenting with different things. I tried soccer ever so briefly but it just seemed too European. I ran track but the more I ran the more I felt like I was going no where. You get it running in circles….ha. I did martial arts (Shaolin Kempo) for a while. This was great. This probably had the biggest influence on me. It allowed me to center my chi. I had a temper & was very emotional. Mr Tanner Artez taught me to channel that emotion into the positive. Not only did martial arts help me emotionally it taught me to do the splits from one table to another. Jean Claude Van Dam was in style at the time.
In doing this amazing split I peaked the curiosity of one of my instructors. She invited me to try out for the cheerleading squad. ARE YOU SERIOUS. I’m a man’s man. I love women. Wait a sec, 100 girls at the try out. I am so there. Not only did I make the team I was Really Really good. I went on to become a All Star and cheer at the college level for 2 years. I even received a partial scholarship for it.
I digress. There was one last sport that I participated in. That sport was volleyball. Why are there so few black volleyball players. Let’s do some math. There are approximately 100 gazillion young black men playing basketball in high school. I looked this up on Wikipedia. There are about 8 young black men playing volleyball in the United States. All of them on the West Coast. I wonder why more young men are not encouraged to play volleyball. I say it is Anti-American not to push other young black men to pick up the sport.
Ding Hui, 19 is a half-African, half-Chinese volleyball player. His mother is Chinese & his father is from South Africa. Come 2010 he’s going to be a superstar on China’s national volleyball team at the London Olympics. His Grandmother who adopted the abandoned boy. Wait a cotton picking minute. Young black boy living with his Grandma. You sure he isn’t American? A Black Dad abandoned his son & the mom left him with her mother….Amazing. Blackinese realize they can make money in the sport but Afro Americans haven’t yet.
I need to point out one thing
There is one professional black male volleyball player. Women have adopted the idea much more 
Oh wait that’s not the US team but it sure is a great picture. Here’s the US Team.
Point of this story….well really there isn’t one except this. Stop boxing our young African American’s into a set expectation as to what sports they should be playing. There is plenty of money out there in leagues other than the NBA & the NFL. Think if everyone had thought like this we wouldn’t have one of the greatest Black athletes of all time.
TIGER WOODS $115 MILLION IN 2008