Written by: Caheem Gindraw, Andrew Hamilton Elementary School, 2020 MSPP Participant and Lace Up & Learn Up camper. This article was written in support of the MSPP Virtual Stay-At-Home Tournament.
One of my favorite parts of PYB is the food because when I leave out the house I don’t get a chance to eat and I am so hungry that I can’t even run. Also, their food is so good when I eat it, it hits the spot! I met new people at PYB, like the people who hand out the food and I became good friends with them. He is a chef and is name is Raheem Islam Jr. Thank you to Raheem for making such great stuff.
Now, the games. When I first played I was so scared because I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want to make my teammates and my coaches mad, so I was going harder and kept pushing myself so I won’t fail. So that’s what I did and I was dropping like 10 points a game and making my coaches happy!
My coaches are so helpful when I was mad they always stood up to me and said, “it’s not worth it, you are doing great out there.” Then I said, “No I wasn’t!. I was horrible out there, I’m sorry for talking back to you. I was just mad.” If I didn’t have those coaches I wouldn’t be successful. Thank you to Coach Torre, Coach Erik, and Coach Jaryn.
The articles are so interesting and I’m finding out new stuff everyday and talking about the writers’ childhood. For example, I never knew that 21 Savage wasn’t from Pennsylvania and when I heard that I felt so dumb because my friend and I were having an argument because I thought he was from Philly but my friend said that he was from London. Then when I heard that, I was like he was right: he was from London.
In my 3rd game at PYB I met a lot of new friends and they were so helpful to me. I was shy to talk to them at first. So to all my friends, thank you for your respect.
When my friends were playing with me in the New York tournament we had a lot of fun. The team that we were playing against was so kind to us that I became friends with them. At the end of the game, we gave them a book and a jersey and they gave us a basketball. Then when everything was over we had to go to the cheesesteak shop and everybody had their own cheesesteak. That was so good! We had a DJ too, but he was playing party music and stuff. We had families watching us from NY. I was so scared because I wanted to impress them and I kinda did that. Thank you to all the people who were there.
When the NY tournament was over we went to a Penn basketball game and it was so fun. I got people’s autographs and I got a chance to see them in person. We also got gear like shirts and hats. The cameraman was nice too because I asked for some pictures and he took them for me, so thank you to the cameraman!