Gball Online Magazine: For the Love of the Game

I walk towards my backyard with my WNBA ball tucked under my arm--knowing all the while that going outside for an hour will be a detriment to the Arabic oral exam I have to work on. But I push it to the back of my mind.

Today I have reason to ignore my schoolwork. I have been accepted, early admission, to my dream university. I am now officially a Duke Blue Devil. The smile is plastered all over my face as I make my way towards the basketball court I have become all too familiar with.

It's foggy outside, and I can barely make out the shadow of the ring and net. But I have not come here to shoot hoops. Today I am here to contemplate my future. My Duke future. My hoops future. My academic future.

I have been accepted to Duke on my academic achievements. But my other dream is to join Gail Goestenkors' varsity team.

My mother has always been on my back about "priorities." I never lived in a household where sports came before school, and it's always going to be that way. It was "finish your work before you go to practice." Not "finish your work after you get back from practice."

I've heard a lot of stories about athletes struggling to get their GPA over a 2.5, and their SAT's over 1000 to be eligible to play. As I think about my 3.7 GPA, and my 1230 SAT's, I feel odd. Am I supposed to be getting low grades, and playing better ball?

Juggling both has been difficult for me. I often sat down and cried about how I couldn't excel as both 'Aseel the athlete,' and 'Aseel the student.' But I am now glad that I figured out how to do both, how to make time for both. At times it meant sacrificing schoolwork to play ball, and at times it meant the other way round. But as my mother always says: "there's a time for everything." And indeed there is.

It's difficult to think about college without basketball. And now, as I sit here, I wonder what it'll be like if I don't make varsity. Of course I know that I'll pull through fine, but does that make me a failure?

All I really ever wanted was to have the option of playing basketball for the rest of my life. My theatre arts teacher says that you can't have everything. I disagree. As an actress, writer, poet, basketball player, academic student, and an accomplished individual, I now do everything I want to do.

It's all about time management. If you know how to organize your time so that you can do everything without leaving anything out, then you can be whatever it is you want to be.

I know that being at the eighth ranked university, academically, in the U.S. means a lot of hard work and studying. And the question is, am I going to be able to juggle both athletics and academics? I don't know yet, but as soon as I do, I'll let you all know.

I love basketball. Playing for Duke would mean I've taken my game to the next level. I know that the intensity of college basketball--and the practice time--makes it very different than what I'm used to at the high school level. But ball is ball, and love is love. Loving the game is very different from playing it.

So I ask myself: "Am I willing to sacrifice anything to play ball for the Blue Devils? Including academics? And most of all, am I ready for the challenge?"

Getting accepted to Duke is the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. The last thing I want to do is to blow the opportunity by focusing only on making the basketball team. Yet, I don't want to give up my hoops dream, either.

So, I'll do what I've done all my life. I'll use every minute of the day to its fullest and never give up hope. I won't sacrifice my academics, but I'll make time for basketball ... and for theater and for writing and for whatever else grabs me in college.

The cold is hitting my cheeks, but I can't feel it. I can sit with my ball and board forever.

I glance at my watch. An hour has passed, my Arabic oral is waiting. I get up. I hesitate for a moment. One last shot won't hurt.

Poem of the Day:
"Shooting Hoops or studying?"
That is the question of the day.
There is no answer, I'm afraid,
You must study and you must play.

Aseel Barghuthi is in her senior year at Amman Baccalaureate School, in the country of Jordan, where she plays both point guard and shooting guard on the school team. She has also lived in the United States (Athens, Georgia) and England. To contact Aseel with any comments or suggestions, e-mail her at aseel@index.com.jo

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