This year I was offered to play with a national prep team for basketball which is a high school team that travels around the country to play against the best high schoolers in the nation in front of D-1 college coaches. My commitment to my high school made this decision very difficult for me because I was just beginning to make a name for myself at my high school. I have also been through so much with my highschool team from having our season cancelled due to covid and losing in the conference championship. Being that this national prep team was exposing me to competition I´ve never seen before and challenging myself in ways I´ve never been challenged before, I was improving as a player rapidly. Being with the prep team made me smarter and stronger because the competition I was playing against was way better than I was. If I was to never take the opportunity with the prep team I would have never made drastic improvements in my game. I played with the prep team for approximately 2 months before ultimately making my decision to play this season with my school team. I feel real passionate about my hometown and state and I want to represent where I’m from. Making the transition back to my original high school I reached a different type of difficulty in working on becoming more of a leader and learning to trust my teammates. I try to motivate all of my teammates as much as possible in practice so that they are ready when it comes time for the game. They may think I’m extremely hard on them but I just want to challenge them to bring their best selves everyday so that we as a team can come together and succeed. I will continue to challenge them as well as myself so that not only I but we as a unit win.