Sadly, he has much to learn.

Basketball finals were today, and what did I get? A temper, an insult, and unnecessarily sore leg muscles. Oh, and an idea for my Dribble Drabble, but I'm sort of trying to make this angsty. So ... sssshhh.

Before we'd even left our campus, I knew that we were in murky waters.Our fifth member, Lottie, backed out at the last minute, telling us that her mum wouldn't let her go (we have to get permission because it's leaving school grounds, and it's after school hours). Because Lottie was in, none of our reserves had permission slips, so one of them couldn't tag along with us. One player down - this wasn't a good start. I sat next to Shannon on the coach, and other than a bit of travel sickness, I was alright, nervous but confident.

It was my second time at the other school campus, and I loved it more than the first time. Because it's newer, it looks so much better than my campus. It's really clean and bright and friendly, while my campus is grubby and dull. Now, I'm not always a fan of bright "LOOK AT ME!" things, and I like old stuff, but I really do like their campus better than ours. ANYWAY ... when we entered their sports hall, I just got a gut feeling that something would go wrong, and we'd lose. Nothing really "went wrong", as such, but we definitely lost.

You see, the best player on the team knows he's good as basketball, and he seems to think anyone who isn't as good as him isn't worthy of being on a team. He hogs the ball, and he seems to have something against Shannon and I, because he just wouldn't pass it to us. Even when we were open, with no one near us, and Callum - the fourth and final player on our team - was at the other end of the pitch, with people around him, James would still pass to Callum rather than us. Whenever we lost the ball, it was because James passed it to Callum and it got intercepted, or because James refused to pass it and someone ended up tackling the ball from him. By the end of the first game, which we lost miserably, I was furious. I'd only had the ball in my possession twice, and I hadn't even dribbled it, let alone got to shoot. Because people were surrounding me, I used my common sense and passed it.

We didn't get to play again until the very last game, which meant for the majority of the hour, we were sitting out, waiting for our next turn. Throughout which, I purposely sat away from James and Callum so I could rant angrily with Shannon about how out of order James was being. We're supposed to be a team. To be a team, you have to work together. James didn't seem to be able to grab that concept. When I wasn't ranting about James, Shannon and I were gushing over a really gorgeous guy who was refereeing the games, and a really cute guy who was taking pictures, from the other campus*. Is it just Shannon and I, or are the guys at that campus so much better looking than the ones at ours?

So, anyway, then our second and final game was about to start. As I walked onto the pitch, I said pointedly to James, "Try to pass the ball this time." And he did, which surprised me. I expected him to just ignore him. So, yes, he still hogged it, and I still didn't get the ball much (and when I did, I had to pass it again almost instantly), but at least he sort of took my words into consideration. Well, anyway, after that match - which we also lost - James said to me, "See, this is why I don't pass it to you! You can't catch!" I missed the ball once, and the way he said it, it was as if we was blaming me for losing the game, even though it was him who lost the ball most, and even though I did miss the ball, I managed to pick it up before the other team got it. He had no right to say that, and it just made me so angry. I was tempted to start a full-blown argument with him in the middle of the sports hall, in front of everyone. But I contained myself, because I don't like being in the spotlight.

If you follow me on twitter, you would have seen what I said about him. If not, I said: "If James learned how to share, we could have won. Sadly, he has much to learn." It was by text when I was on the coach, and I wasn't sure how many characters I had before the tweeting limit of 140. If I had some way of knowing, I would have said more, but there we go. Besides, I think those two sentences really cover all that needs to be said. James is like a little boy.

So, on the coach ride back, in between texting, gushing and eavesdropping, Shannon and I ranted about James and his selfishness again. When I got home, I ranted to my nan, then to my mum, then to my grandad (they all wanted to hear the story, and they were never in the room at the same time). Now, I'm ranting to you, blog readers. Thank you for listening this far ... or reading or ... yeah.

Most of my anger seeped out when I was catching up on my YouTube subscriptions, which I'm still in the process of doing. I had three and a half pages, each with twenty videos on, but now I'm on the last page! Hoorah!

In lighter-but-still-basketball-related news, there was a guy from the other campus with 60's hair. It looked so funny. Shannon and I kept giggling whenever he walked past ... it didn't help when we had to play against him, though. He bumped into me, too, but I could only see his neck because he's so tall and I was too disorientated from the bump to look up... if I did, though, I would have giggled. He looked so ridiculous.

Now, I'm going to write out my Dribble Drabble after forcing myself to copy, paste and edit some information about lightning charges for Viper's** Science class, that I have to hand in tomorrow. Blehhh. I hate his class. My other Science class is so much better.

Anyway...
Keep blogging!

*They looked around our age, as well, for the record. They volunteered to help out. Although the one taking pictures might have been Year 7 (or he just hadn't hit puberty yet... he wasn't small, as such, but he was smaller than us).
**His name isn't Mr. Viper, for the record. It's Mr Piper, but his first name starts with a V, and so I call him Mr Viper, because he's horrible and irrational.