Mike+Moskal

Hello everybody!!! My name is Mike and I am a sophomore at Medaille. I am a huge sports fan. Any sport on TV I will watch. I especially like basketball. I played basketball for 8 years but I don't any more. I play slow pitch softball. I played in two leagues this summer and i am currently playing one this fall. My mens league team during the summer came in third place in the league. I really would like to be a sports analyst on ESPN. I am also a big fan of movies. I like mostly comedies but I will watch just about anything. I have two dogs and a hampster. I have two older brothers and one older sister. My family is pretty close which makes things very fun at family gatherings.

Mike Moskal Mary Louise Hill Analytical Writing 14 October 2008 My Years of Basketball “What are the systems we live in?” is a question posed by Tim Parks. When I initially heard the quote, my first thought was basketball. Basketball has many different philosophies. The type of offense that can be run, such as Phil Jackson’s (Los Angeles Lakers head coach) triangle offense and the type of defense that can be run which can either be a variety of zone or man to man, are two major questions. These can determine the type of system you are trying to create as a coach. Coaches always say that if the players believe in their system that they will be successful. I have played in three different systems since I have been playing basketball. In grammar school from fourth grade to eighth grade, in high school from ninth to eleventh, and then one more in my senior year of high school. These different systems all had different success rates to them and it had to do with how much the team believed in the system. In grammar school, my coach had a very simple offense. We had two or three half court set plays that we ran. It was a completely different monster on the defensive end. We had four different full court presses, which are full court defenses that are designed to ensue chaos on the other team and make them turn the ball over. We also had six different half court defenses. Our coach would call out random defenses throughout the game and we would just automatically get in that defense. that was the main part of the system was to keep the other team confused as to which defense we would be playing. We believed a lot in our coach, in each other (because that is what our coach preached to us), in his system, and in the offence and defensive scheme that he came up with. My friends and I came home with the city wide small school championship at the end of my eighth grade year as well as a couple of tournament championships from that year as well. We went through tough times through the year but we bonded and got closer and now those guys are still my friends even though most of us went to different high schools. At the start of my freshman year basketball season I didn’t know what to expect. I only had one of my teammates from grammar school with me. It was going to be a completely different team that I would grow with this time. It would also be a new system I would play in for the first time ever. This system was very different. We concentrated more on the offensive side of the ball more. We also played a lot more man to man defense than I was used to. Many of my team mates were going through the same thing trying to get use to a new system. This brought us closer together though. We were a lot closer than I was with my grammar school teammates. It was like having eleven brothers going to school with you. This new system did not leave our team winning many games at all. In my sophomore season we won I think six games out of twenty. My junior year was a little bit better when we added some transfer players to our roster. But the system that we were trying to believe in was not working. It was hard to believe in a system that was not leaving us winning even with the great amount of talent that we had on the squad. After my junior year basketball season the coach got removed from the head coaching spot. We got a new coach with a new staff. He had a different philosophy. We ran different types of defenses, both zone and man to man, and different kinds of offenses. We even had a set fast break play the worked very well. With the talent that we had assembled, this new system brought out the best in us. We came within one game of going to the state tournament. We believed in what he preached. Mostly what he preached was having “Heart and Desire”. If you have those two things you can do anything. We always played hard; like we wanted it each time. It got us very far in that season. It was upsetting at the end of that season to have to leave my brothers behind that we juniors. I only wish that we had Coach Sil Dan for more of my time playing in high school. We could have done great things with the system that he had. Different systems that we live in makes me thing about basketball and the different coaches I have played for. The coaches used different tactics to help us win. I made great friendships while playing basketball. Those guys that I played with in my senior year I definitely consider my brothers and some of my best friends. You go into battle with those guys out there and you have to back each other up all the time. Every one of those systems supported that message.