Today, I’m talking about Thanksgiving. In 1621 Pilgrims voyaged across the sea to America and met the Wampanoag tribe. They taught each other how to live, and they had a big feast that lasted for 3 days, which is now thanksgiving. Here are some things I’m thankful for: My friends, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, Ted Lasso, My Family, My dog, the Absolutely Incredible Boston Celtics, Dortmund going into the Champions League, the Patriots tanking ALL THEIR DARN GAMES for a draft pick, Mac Jones (he tries, he tries,) Omada, Turkey, Sandwiches, Tacos, and…..
I am going to start this post off by saying it was inspired by my great friend, in basketball, and in just life. Aaron. You can visit his blog here: Aaron’s blog
Anyway, this was inspired by him, because he talked about his journey. So I wanna do that too. So thanks Aaron for inspiring me. So, I started out living in DC, 3 years old with my little brother as a little baby. (I don’t wanna get anything wrong, I am born in Boston, and am Boston till I die. I just lived in DC.) I had a big backyard, and my dad bought me a little plastic hoop. Sometimes, I would play on the little hoop.
Taken by my dad…or my mom.
Next, we moved to North Carolina, and the hoop came to. But, in my driveway, there was a big hoop screwed to the garage. I would try and score, but the hoop was like, 10 feet, and I was like, 3 or 4. So I stuck to playing on the little hoop. Living in this house, I played in my first basketball league at The Y! The coaches were nice, and made sure we all scored. I had great times at the Y. Next, we moved to a rental house before we moved into our house now. This house had a hoop in the driveway, and I would play every night after dinner. After that, we moved into our final, house which I live in now. We were living there for a while, and my dad surprised me with a basketball hoop for our driveway! (I still use this hoop) I would play a lot, and our neighbors had a hoop too, so I’d play with them a lot too. That summer, I started kindergarten at my new school, and there was a basketball hoop on the playground. I would go to extended day a lot, and shoot on the little hoop. I would sometimes play at recess with other kids. Around winter, my dad took me to my first game. It was Duke vs. some no name, and I think this is where I started to love basketball. This was 2017, and Duke had a great year. Duke won, and I loved it all. The scoring the running. The players. I loved everything, and after that game, I knew I was gonna start to love the game. Around Christmas, I played in a recreational YMCA league, and I loved it. I don’t mean to brag, but since I was tall, I kinda scored a lot. It was a great season, and I had my first friend through basketball…Stell. Stell was a kid a few inches shorter with me, and he really liked soccer. He would play on the same team with me in basketball, and I’d play soccer with him. We played in two leagues together and had a lot of fun. I played with him in first and second grade, and then he played soccer only. Anyway, in second grade, I played Woodcroft. Woodcroft was a tiny league, and I don’t mean to criticize, but it wasn’t very well put together. I was 7, and I was playing like, 11 year olds. They would always beat us, and I got mad sometimes. Anyway, the season ended, and COVID came. During quarantine, I spent a lot of time playing basketball in the hoop in my driveway. 3rd grade rolled around, and I was in the same class as my good friend Rohan. We both loved Duke basketball, and he thought it was awesome how my cousin played at the time.
Here he is! He now currently plays in Finland, and played basketball in the FIBA for Ivory Coast, where his dad is from. Me and Rohan would shoot around a lot, and constantly talk about Duke’s not-so-well season that year. We would play every day at recess, and we would have battles until Mrs. Baker blew the whistle. The most memorable game was “The Never-Ending Game,” which lasted four days. On day 1, right before the whistle, I hit a pull-up jump shot to equalize, 17-17. The next day, game ends 35-35. Day 3, 37-37. (We had a little disagreement) and finally, Day 4, I won holding the ball 50-52. Rohan put up a great fight though. These were great times, and Rohan is one of my best friends through basketball, and in general. In late May of 3rd grade, I tried out for my first AAU team. I was really nervous, because we were being recorded on a Zoom call. That night, I went to bed so nervous. I finally woke up on Monday to the words, “YOU MADE IT!” From my family. I was so happy and I went to school that day feeling like a KING. School was finally let out, and I went to a basketball camp sponsored by the AAU team. My coach was there, and he talked about the team. But after the first day, I came home to some good and bad news. The bad news was that there wasn’t enough players to make a 3rd grade team. But the good news was that the club thought I was good enough to play for the 6TH GRADE TEAM. AND I WAS IN 3RD. I was so happy! Anyway, me and my team played in our first tournament in Raleigh, and we got 2nd place. I had a great season with that team, but I went to a workout with the Durham Hurricanes. I wasn’t used to their style of play, and had to adapt a lot. But after 2 months of hard work, I made the team! I was playing PF, and if we tried to play small, I played center. I made some really good friends on that team. Aidan, Mac, Semaj, Meyer, Rohan, (again) and Harrison. In that whole season, we either got first or second in that tournament, and we were the runner-up for the state championship. I was really looking forward to another season with the ‘Canes, and I had a coach who would help me out to. His name was Fred, and he had a team called the Blue Flames. My cousin and Fred’s son both played for the Flames, and for their high school, Northwood’s Varsity basketball team. (I think Fred’s son, Fred Jr., will play for Ole Miss basketball.) Anyway, around January or February, the ‘Canes had many new players, and since playing time had to be equal, I would not get much. I had a big decision: stay with the ‘Canes and not have much playing time, or find another team. I picked out try out for another. I tried out for two teams, NC Wildcats, and Team Stacked. Fred also said he could make a team with me and my friends. I had made both NC Wildcats and Team Stacked, but I chose to play with Fred. So Far we have won 1 tournament, In which I had the winning block against our rivals, the Granville Elites in the Beast of the East Basketball Tournament.
Our ring. Taken by me.
I have made some great friends on my new team with Aaron W, Aaron P, Noah C, Big Josh, Silas, Noah, and Knox. Thank you for reading!
For Halloween this year I was Larry Bird. For those of you who don’t know, Larry Bird is a basketball player for the Boston Celtics, the best team ever. Im definitely not biased. It’s definitely not like I was born in Boston and while I’m writing this is around me:
(A quick video taken by me showing how big of a Celtics fan I am.) So anyway, basketball is my life, and I would tell you more, but you can wait until my next post. Any way so here is a picture of Larry:
Pretty similar huh? Anyway, Larry Bird was a funny and great trash talker, along with his great basketball ability, and the weirdest shooting form ever. Larry once walked up to the other team’s bench, and said, something like this, “Y’all are so bad I’m gonna play this game left handed on you.” And he did. 47 points, 14 assists. Anyway what made Larry Bird so great was great shooting ability, and great driving and in the post skill. Now that we’re talking about shooting, I could not finish this post without talking about Larry Bird’s form. This is how you’re supposed to shoot:
Big difference huh? Yeah. Larry cocks his arm back too much. But if you don’t like sports, the ‘boring’ part is over. If you like Halloween, I’ll be talking about the history now. A theory holds that Halloween celebrations were inspired by garden parties. Another theory says that Halloween began as a Christian holiday as the eve of All Hollows Day. It spread to the Americas, and according to Wikipedia, Lesly Bannayne and Cindy Ott said that Catholics colonists in Maryland started to observe All Hallows Eve. Puritans of New England, (BOSTON, BABY!) opposed All Hallows Eve. (Oh.) it wasn’t until Irish and Scottish immigrants came in the 18 and 19 hundreds that Halloween became a major holiday. And to this day, that’s why we celebrate Halloween. (Thank you, Irish! For Boston, and this great day!) So now, I’ll be talking about, costumes, and candy. I think the best costume I saw this year was either Big Bird or a Prime Bottle. (I love funny costumes.) The Prime bottle was funny because of Prime’s giant popularity rise this year, and I have big appreciation for people who made these because it looked hard. My favorite candy is probably Twix, because it’s chocolate and caramel. Trolli worms are good too. But anyway, that’s all. Stay tuned!
This summer, we read a book called Finding Someplace, by Denise Lewis Patrick. It’s about a girl in Hurricane Katrina. Her name is Reesie, and her birthday is coming up soon. But her birthday comes, and Hurricane Katrina hits. She is in her neighbor’s house with her boyfriend’s brother (André) and his wife, (Eritrea) and neighbor, Miss Martine. We had to write about who we thought the best character was, and what we would bring if we had to evacuate our houses on short notice. A bit about the backpack part: In the book, Reesie’s godparents plan to take her out of New Orleans, but all the highways in the town go one way: OUT. Parraine (godfather) is trying to find a way in, and over the phone (no idea how they had WiFi in the biggest Hurricane ever), tells her to pack up the most important things she had. This led to the idea of the backpack project: We had to pick things that we thought we would need if we needed to evacuate on short notice. Here is mine:
Taken by moi.
I packed some pretty crucial things, and I believe that would really help. Next we had to write about who we thought was the hero. Here is a picture of my paper:
Taken by me
I wrote that Dré was the hero because he helped everyone onto the boat to rescue them, punched a hole in the roof so the group could get to the roof, told a white lie that Miss Martine was his grandmother so she could get help, and he saved her life. Dré kept morale high by singing Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’ to Reesie. Dré is brave for surviving the world’s worst hurricane. That is all for today, and I hope you enjoyed!
Hello everyone, today I will be talking about the greatest rivalry German soccer has ever seen. This fierce rivalry involves the two clubs Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04. This extremely fierce rivalry dates back to May 3rd, 1940 with a Schalke 04 win 4-2, won mostly by Schalke’s short quick passes. Schalke won all 3 matches until 1927. The two teams never met until the Gauliga was made (now Bundesliga, which means federation league.) in the next years in the Gauliga, 16 matches were played and Schalke won 14, drew 1, and lost 1. But finally, Dortmund came back and won Westphalia OVER SCHALKE. In the late 40’s to early 60’s, Dortmund dominated Schalke winning 9 of their 13 first meetings. In all from 1947-1963, Dortmund won 25 of the 32 matches. In 1963, the Bundesliga was created, and Dortmund continued their dominance winning 8 of their first 10 meetings with Schalke. Until the 2000s matches ping-ponged back and forth between Dortmund and Schalke. In the past 20 years Dortmund has been of dominance in the Bundesliga, and Schalke has been falling behind the ranks in the Bundesliga 2. In the best way a Dortmund fan like myself can put it, Bors In conclusion, Dortmund has developed tinier grudge rivalries with FC Bayern Munchen, located in Munich. Dortmund faces Bayern in ‘Der Klassiker’ (the Classic), but that rivalry is another post. But back to the rivalry, here are some stats.
In late August, the 6th graders at my school took a trip to Camp Kirkwood, in Watha, NC. First, we had to get on BIG buses to go east. The whole time, some people were yelling, singing or watching the movie. The movie was about a guy who works at a zoo, and does activities with the gorilla outside the zoo (that’s all I remember about the movie). I tried to take a nap a couple of times, but was awaken about 10 seconds later by people singing “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift. Then, the movie started playing “Low” by Flo Rida, and that seemed to boost the mood, and every sang along. When we were about a couple minutes away, it started to rain. There were risks of a hard rain, and the teachers questioned if we should even go on this trip. Finally, we got to Camp. Since it was raining, we all had to grab a bag, and bring it into a roofed area called the Airnasium. It didn’t matter which bag we grabbed; we just had to bring them all to the Airnasium. This is a photo taken by a teacher of all the bags.We got dismissed by cabins, and we settled into our cabins and went to lunch. This is a photo taken by a teacher of the food hall.
Photo taken by my teacher
After we had lunch, we went back to our cabins and relaxed for a little bit. Then, we went to a big courtyard, where we would get separated into groups. I was in group 1, and we were going to the pool. Once we got there, we had to do swimming tests. I passed mine, which meant I could swim in the deep end. The pool was definitely my favorite activity; I had a fun time messing around, playing Moss, and joking with my friends, and just being a 6th grader. After that, we changed out of our bathing suits, and went to orienteering. Here is a picture taken by…guess who- a teacher!
Photo taken by my teacher
At orienteering, we learned a LOT about trees, and played fun games, such as trivia, and we guided our friends to a specific tree, with them in a blindfold, and then they had to guess what tree we guided them to. After that, we did team building where we did games such as: tossing a ping-pong ball in the air and seeing how many times you can clap your partners hands before catching it again, and lowering down a hula-hoop with your pointer fingers.
Taken by a teacher.
Finally, dinner, came. After dinner, we could either play dodgeball, or watch a movie. Being the athlete I am, I decided to play dodgeball with by friends. But when I was playing, it was raining outside of the Airnasium, and I went to go grab a ball, but then I slipped and got all dirty, and went back to my cabin to get a shower. After that I just decided to go chill with my friends and watch a movie, because the game was over.
DAY 2
The next morning when we woke up, it had raging all night, and one of the cabins was almost flooded. I woke up feeling miserable, about the rain and other things that had happened that night.
taken by a teacher.
I ate breakfast, and that day, we did the V-Swing. I’ll admit, I didn’t go on because you had to pull a rope to start swinging, and you’re like 40 feet in the air swinging in an oval, and I was also worried I was going to pull the rope wrong, and fall 40 feet to the ground.
Taken by a teacher.
Next, we swam in the pool, played moss, swam around and tried to take over the floaties. We had a great time swimming and listening to the music. Next, we had dinner, and went to a little outdoor congregation pew area. We took some pictures, and then the counselors told us we were gong to the campfire. It was getting dark, but the counselors had a Tiki-Torch to guide us. Once we got there, we sang songs, roasted marshmallows, and talked. Finally, we walked back to the cabins, and we were all screaming ‘I Want It That Way’ by the Backstreet Boys.
Day 3
We woke up early next morning, ate breakfast, and set out for the zip line. The counselors told us the instructions, and a couple kids went on first. I had to wait a really long time to go on the zip line, but even thought it was a 30-second ride it was definitely worth it. The zip line threw you over the lake, and over kids in canoes. It was a beautiful view. This photo is taken by a teacher.
Next, we went canoeing all around the lake, yelling at people on the zip line. We told jokes to other canoes, and did our best not to fall out. Finally, it was time for our last meal at camp. Pizza! Once we all ate we gathered our things from our cabin and hopped on the bus. The game for that ride was: look at random drivers and find something funny or interesting. There was more Taylor Swift, and then everyone sang ‘Barbie World’ by Ice Spice. Finally, we got back to school. I had lots of good memories at camp, and had such a great time. Big thanks to the people at Durham Academy who planned this trip, and gave me great memories.
