On the basketball court there is a term I have recently learned from my friend, author and high school basketball coach, Sonya Elliott. Triple Threat.

As a coach she expects her players to go into Triple Threat when playing offensively. In a nutshell, TT is when  a player has the ball and is facing their basket ready to make one of three choices: pass, shoot, or drive the ball to the hoop.

Options. Choices. Different paths to one goal.

Isn’t this life? We are repeatedly thrown choices where we get to decide the best way forward. It is easy to want to run the other way or give up completely when something unexpected comes our way. So much easier to blame this new obstacle and just throw in the towel. (Obstacles, are like rules, I say…made to be broken.)

When I was in 8^th grade, I made the final cut for the girls’ basketball team. Something new and not always likely for me, as I was not necessarily the most athletic. I was beyond thrilled to see my name on the roster after a week of tryouts. I was Inspired. Affirmed.

The following Monday that all changed in a second.

Coach C called me into his office to tell me, L.B. was sick during tryouts last week. She was on our team last year, you weren’t. We only have ten uniforms. How would you like to be the team’s water girl instead of being on the team?

No, thanks.

My jock girlfriends who made the cut thought I was right not to accept the water girl position. I was no longer feeling thrilled, inspired and definitely not affirmed by the coach’s decision to cut me from the team before I even had a chance to play. My mom offered to call him or the principal. I told her, No, thanks.

The incident didn’t throw me into therapy or stop me from trying out for things again. However, it left a scar. A scar that tells a story of a time when someone didn’t believe in me, so I took a different path, the one to believe in myself. A time when I went forward.

People say crap to us. Negative stuff sometimes. Hurtful things. We can choose to let that shut us down or open us up.

On a deeper and totally different level, my friend who played basketball her whole life and who coached the game as well was given a Triple Threat choice so to speak.

Sonya and her fiancé were hit by a train. He died. She lived but just barely, for a long time. It wasn’t until she focused on the path ahead and embraced her choices that she began to live again.

We all are thrown curveballs, bad passes if you will, maybe not something as tragic as Sonya’s experience but we all are given choices of how to deal with life. There is only one way back, but so many more opportunities forward if we just open up. Open up our eyes. Open up our hearts.

To receive a complimentary copy of Sonya Elliot’s book, Back on the Court – A Young Woman’s Triumphant Return to Life, Love and Basketball…Post your answer to the following: Tell us about your experience when you were given a choice to go forward or backward.

All who post a comment will be entered to win a copy of Sonya’s beautiful story. I will announce the winner next Friday, October 26^th.