The picture is of my daughter exhausted after a basketball game. Probably from screaming and yelling for us, but then all the cart wheels she does on the court post game. That picture illustrates perfectly what I call the Roller Coaster. When coaching varsity basketball, you immediately enter the Roller Coaster. The highs and lows can be easily compared to that fun joy ride at the amusement park.As you enter the ride, you are full of excitement wanting to feel the thrill of the climbing the hill and coming down quickly. The feeling in your stomach, the laughing, the emotional "high" that you get from riding,
However, at the bottom of the hill and sometimes even when going up, you feel nauseous. You want off this ride, and you will never ride again, you tell yourself.
With each new season, there is excitment and then when you win or lose, you enter the Roller Coaster. When you lose, you feel as if everything you do, all your hard work is for nothing. You often ask yourself "Why am I doing this?" "What am I doing wrong?", there is some self doubt. But when you win, you sometimes start to believe that you know everything there is about the game, you can become intoxicated with yourself. You can forget how hard it was to win.
The Roller Coaster is part of the job. It is what often times makes the ride enjoyable, or makes you miserable.
