MINEOLA, N.Y. — My role had become far too embarrassing to just sit around. It was my senior year of high school, the season-opener of my varsity basketball season, and there I was — still in that same spot on the bench I’d occupied the past year.

As a junior, life as a benchwarmer didn’t suck: We could joke around without fear of embarrassing ourselves in the game. But being the senior benchwarmer wasn’t as funny. My coach still didn’t like me, and I was convinced it was for some other reason than my basketball skills.

Perhaps that’s why I was so excited when I heard my name called midway through the first quarter. “Mike!” my coach yelled. I popped from my chair. Why was I going into the game? I had no freakin’ clue. But perhaps my coach had adopted my way of thinking.

I looked to my right and met my coach’s eye, to see who he wanted me to take out of the game. But when he looked over his eyes widened. The buzzer at the scorer’s table blared. The referee ushered me into the game. Only then I realized what I had done and my coach knew he couldn’t stop me. The “Mike” he wanted to get the attention of wasn’t me, but another player. Who was already on the court. So began the most embarrassing 12 seconds of my life, as I ran from end to end twice, fouled an opposing player and plodded back to my seat on the bench.

My nightmare probably isn’t the same as yours, but then again, maybe it is. Believing in yourself takes courage, and sometimes it backfires. We all have experienced situations where we were wrong about ourselves. We have times — like when I thought I went from layup line rebounder to team savior — we were publicly wrong, too. It’s called being naive, and that’s part of being young.

When I came to Syracuse, I was dead set on becoming a journalist. Yet my career hadn’t gotten off to quite the scorching start I projected in the bubble of my own mind. It took me months to get a story, no one came to me with big ideas to work on or cared about my opinions when I thought I came up with some of my own. I implied to my friends that people just “keep kicking dirt in my face.” They laughed at me, and I deserved it.

Some truths have to be learned. This story doesn’t end with me rising above my high school coach’s expectations and venturing to the NBA. But being wrong about my ability as a journalist was perhaps the only reason I stuck with it. And for that reason, I was wrong a few more times: that I couldn’t make friends, that I couldn’t fall in love, that my experience couldn’t possibly get better.

Keeping blind faith through early failures at The D.O. helped me improve, and now three years later I’m writing a final column many probably expected I wouldn’t. Everyone needs someone who can be a supportive voice for them, and perhaps we can start with ourselves.

It took me a while to clear that night in senior year of high school out of my mind, the night I felt like more of a loser than ever. As we headed into the halftime locker room, I was mortified and felt some sort of impulsion to apologize to the kid I took out of the game. Then a teammate approached me wearing a mischievous grin.

“My man,” he said and offered his hand in joking congratulation. He hadn’t played, either. “Maybe I should be like McCleary. Check myself into the game.” The team laughed.

Yeah, I thought. This is funny. And maybe I could even pretend it was cool. Like… I went for it. I got in the game and my coach didn’t even have a say. It wasn’t the last time believing in myself embarrassed me, but I always learned something new.

And, the next time my coach called for “Mike,” I remembered what I probably should have in that embarrassing moment: They called me “McCleary.”

Michael McCleary was a senior staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear. He can be reached at mmcclear@syr.edu and on Twitter @mikejmccleary.

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Published on April 26, 2020 at 12:08 am