MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- It was Friday morning, April 3, 2015, as I walked into the IronWorks Gym’s sports courts amazed at the size of the crowd attending the Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron basketball tournament.
The pressure was on, there was a lot more teams than I expected which meant more competition and more chances to lose.
It was a single-elimination tournament, so you only had one chance to win it all; losing was not an option.
As I made my way through the crowd of people preparing for the tournament, I finally found my team.
We were meeting for the first time because, honestly, we hadn’t practiced together at all. Sgt. Israel Garcia, an administrative specialist with H&HS, put the team together and we all just showed up and did what we came to do, which was win of course.
Our team name was the Paper Pushers, because everyone else on the team was an administrative specialist and that’s what they do… push papers.
We had a bye the first round, meaning we didn’t play until the second round, which was good for us because we got to watch the other teams play and scout out the competition.
Since I “balled” frequently, I already knew who was good and would give us a run for our money.
After observing our competitors, we all came to the agreement that the team from the Distribution Management Office, FedEx, was going to be the only team we needed to worry about and it was just our luck that we ended up playing them first.
Both teams knew this was going to be the hardest game, so the tension was high, the competitiveness was intense and there was a lot of arguing towards the end.
Most of the arguments occurred due to the fact that there were no referees, forcing us to make our own calls.
Despite the arguments we ended up winning without any bad blood.
Once FedEx was defeated, the next game was easy. We used the second game to work on our communication and teamwork in preparation for our final face-off.
Our third and final game was against The Bosses which consisted of four officers, one of which is the station executive officer; a sergeant major, a gunnery sergeant and a sergeant.
Was it a little intimidating? Yes, but Sgt. Maj. Coleman Kinzer’s knee-high socks, short shorts and throwback converse, was the most motivating thing I’ve ever seen.
At one point during the game I ended up having to guard him, my own squadron sergeant major who is twice my height, and he was aggressive.
When the tables had turned, the aggression grew.
I was trying to get around him when he shoved me with his elbow and the only thing I could do was say “received sergeant major.” He didn’t think it was a foul, so it wasn’t.
The scores were close at the beginning, but as time went on The Bosses either got tired due to their old age or just lost their motivation because we ended up winning by double digits.
It was a great game and both teams were exhausted but I was far from done.
Later that day, I wormed my way into playing in the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society basketball tournament with Combat Logistics Company 36, ending in another win.
All-in-all it was a great experience. I had fun and it reinforced my mantra that ball is life.