The Freedom Writers Diary - Erin Gruwell [103]
I have always been a key player on the team. My teammates worked hard with the help of my attitude and motivation. I knew what it took to get them pumped up. So why was my coach kicking me off the basketball team? On one hand, my attitude was beneficial to fellow teammates. I would whisper things to girls on the team to make them mad, and also to make them play harder. That same attitude was the one my coach didn’t like.
Yeah, I have an attitude. Yeah, I’m sarcastic and mouthy; I will be the first to admit it. But what seventeen-year-old isn’t? I am me, and I am not about to change my attitude for coach or anyone else. Coach didn’t like the looks I made. She always thought I was trying to upset her. She always thought I was talking about her when she turned around. She would say stupid things, and all the time the team started laughing. Coach thought I was making them laugh, but it was her. I should be a bodybuilder, with all the push-ups and suicides she made me do.
I know I have talent, and I have always wanted to play basketball in college, but who is going to notice me sitting in the stands?
All I could think about was, “Why was she doing this to me?” I just can’t be a conformist like most of the girls on the team.
For three weeks straight I swallowed my pride and walked into my coach’s office to discuss my removal from the team. At times I thought she understood where I was coming from, and would give me another chance.
I never did get back on the team. She gave up on me, and I felt as though life had as well. Basketball was the only consistent thing I had in my life. It was how I relieved the stress of everyday life. I could go to practice and forget everything outside the gym. Basketball was everything to me. I loved it. It was my life.
Though I didn’t play for my high school, I went to every game. I watched them win the league championship. I watched them go to CIF, and I watched them go to the championship game I dealt with the pain of not playing and sat in the stands. I wanted my coach to know that she may have given up on me, but I would never give up on my team. My self-esteem and my confidence are low at this point, but I haven’t given up. Especially not with my old teammates coming and telling me how the coach would use me as an example. When the girls would practice lazy or not play with intensity she would say “Girls, you should work hard. Joan would work very hard to get back on the team.”
The fact that I was not playing basketball anymore opened up the door to another opportunity for me. I was able to become more involved in the activities that I was only giving a quarter of myself to. One of those activities was the Freedom Writers. When I was kicked off the team, the Freedom Writers were asked to come to New York to receive the Spirit of Anne Frank Award and also to tape a segment for Prime Time Live. There were only a few of us that were allowed to go. We had an option: either write a paper on why you should go to represent the Freedom Writers, or we didn’t have to go. I chose to write. I knew that some of the girls on the basketball team really wanted to go, but due to the fact that there was a game in a couple days they were not permitted to go. That decision was not made by Ms. G but by the coach.
I always believed that for every bad thing comes a good thing. My attitude is better these days. I bite my tongue a lot. I now know that “Attitude is everything!” I’m not perfect, no one is, but I’m trying.
Like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.” I am far from perfection, but I’m changing.
Diary 125
Dear Diary,
What the heck just happened? Out of a hundred and fifty Freedom Writers, I have been chosen to speak in front of Barbara Boxer, our senator! Why me? Why would the Freedom Writers want the most outrageous student in the whole group to represent them in front