Middle school basketball proves to be less competitive than high school

Maxwell McDaniel, Staff Reporter

Many students take part in sports after school, as they improve physical fitness, teamwork, and can be simply enjoyable. For freshman Dishan Fields, though, it’s a chance for something greater.

“I was trying to get a deal on college,” Fields said. “My dad introduced [basketball] to me as a kid, and I just never stopped playing it.”

According to Fields, middle school basketball doesn’t offer the same competitive aura that high school does.

“You have more people [at games] usually, you actually have something to play for because high school is so much bigger,” Fields said.

The junior varsity coach, coach Hargrove, lives close, so, as Fields said, he “got early experience in the game,” when he was growing up.

Dishan appreciates this new aspect of the game, though.

“High school is where colleges are looking at you,” Fields said.

There’s another freshman who’s trying to use basketball as a gateway to college, Thomas “Tre” Butler says that he “just wants to go to college for free” to get in with an athletic scholarship.

Butler says he learned the basics of the game from his dad in third grade.

“I’d play at the rec center, school, my house, anywhere where a basketball court was,” Butler said.

Much like Fields, he also noticed a shift in seriousness when he moved from middle school to high school. “Basketball in middle school, it’s not as serious, and the high school people are harder to play…they’re bigger than me,” Butler said.

Even with this in mind, he still believes that, “[the] competitiveness makes the game a lot more fun.”