Sports made my life happy

When I was a kid, I was a shy boy that usually couldn’t talk to people I didn’t know. But there was one way I could communicate with them. That was when I was playing sports.　

When I was in third grade, my family and I moved to America. I couldn’t talk to anybody. One reason was I couldn’t speak or understand English at that time. The other reason was my character. My classmates tried to communicate with me, but I didn’t response properly. I still remember those days. I was really mad at myself. During time of recess, the classmates took me to the soccer field. Naturally, we started playing soccer.　I was a boy that loved to play soccer, and I was pretty good at it. Everyone was surprised by my playing ability. I don’t know why but, I turn into an aggressive person when I play sports. I was telling the players how to move, what to do. First it was all gesture, but as the playing time passed by, I was yelling in English. This was the time when I started communicating with them. As these same days passed by, I was making many friends. I’m not sure when, but my shyness was gone somewhere.　

When I became a fifth grader, I was a basketball player. I was playing basketball everyday. I also made a lot of friends by playing basketball. When I got to seventh grade, my family and I moved back to Japan. At that time, I was a boy who could communicate with anybody. I joined the basketball club for my school. We were one of the schools that had the hardest practice in Tokyo. Many teammates that practiced together are my best friends now. We know how it feels to work hard. We know about each other because we spent a lot of time in practice. I was spending most of my school days with them. Even though we all went to different high-schools, we kept in touch. We knew about each others information because we all became captains or the star player for our team and played against each other many times, thanks to our hard work in middle-school.

Now, we all play together in a team that we made. All the members are the graduates from the same middle-school. We are the oldest players, and the young players are like our small brothers. We are like a family. They are sometimes my best friends, and sometimes my brothers. I’m sure that if I hadn’t played basketball, I couldn’t have had this much fun and also couldn’t have had relationships like these.　Sports made my life happy.