I started playing basketball when I was in 3rd grade. I was playing for the YMCA for 1 year because I couldn’t join basketball yet at Booth Fickett. I  was in 5th grade when I joined basketball for Booth Fickett and played for girls and boys at the time because they were doing coed for the team. The coach for 5th grade was Coach Lalo. He was a good coach, helping me a lot with my basketball skills. When I was in 6th grade I joined basketball as well. The coaches were Coach Gallego and Coach Coyle. I wasn’t as good for 6th grade, I played a lot down low – that was my position since I was playing for the YMCA. I never played point guard or shooting guard; I always did 5, called the center, and I did 4, called power forward.

My best year playing basketball was 8th grade because I had the best coaches that taught me well. My coaches were Coach Williams, Coach Hitz, and Coach Gallego. They were the best coaches I’d had. They taught me teamwork and elevated my playing skills, so I could prepare for high school basketball. We had a lot of wins and some losses during my seasons. I had to miss a couple of my games because I had gotten COVID-19. We lost those games, but when I came back to the last game of our season we won that game against Boorman Middle School. We thought we weren’t going to be able to play anymore, but my coach said that we had playoff tournaments.  We won most of our games, but the team that had us working the hardest was Desert Sky Middle School. They were a tough team to play against. We lost them both times we played them, but the last game we played against them we were very close to winning. We were ahead in the first half, but they came back fast in the second half because our entire team was so tired from playing 5 games back-to-back before them. We only had 30 minutes or less to rest between each game. After we played Desert Sky, we thought that we didn’t make it to the state championship, but we did, although we lost to Desert Sky again. However, we took 2nd place.

For summer, I joined the summer league for Sahuaro High School. I was terrified to join it because I thought that me and my friends were going to be the only freshmen,  but we weren’t, so we weren’t as scared anymore. When we had our first game we were very nervous about playing because we had never played with older girls and some of the older girls had more experience than us. We lost our first game, but I learned a lot from that one game. In our second game we won, and we had more experience after our first game and played better as a team. The rest of the season was not only a good opportunity to learn but it also helped me gain comfort in starting high school. All in all, basketball has helped me make strong friendships in high school, makes me want to have better grades, and just has made me love the sport even more.