I wanted to be the first woman in the NBA.
Sure, it sounds weird now after the establishment of the WNBA and subsequent women’s leagues, but at seven years old, I had attended enough Connecticut basketball games that it had become an obsession.
I got butterflies when the starting lineups were read, envisioning that one day my name would be announced over the loudspeaker as I ran in between my teammates, slapping their hands, and that I would be hitting the memorable last-second shot.
To make this dream a reality, I learned early that I had to work for it. School teams, travel teams and AAU teams ran concurrently, filling my afternoons and weekends, making me better. I attended summer camps and leagues, knowing stopping could mean missing a beat.
By junior year, my high school basketball team was No. 1 in its conference. I battled with two other teammates for starting shooting guard, already hampered by the fact that I was the shortest player on the team.
Then I started to feel a tweak in my right foot. Though I had to ease up at times, I continued to play.
The tweak turned into a twinge, and teammates began to notice my hobbling. But still, I pressed on, assuming that I was just sore or not stretched enough. Finally, the twinge turned into pain until, during one practice, I was in so much agony that a teammate had to escort me to the trainer.
I had been playing with a stress fracture for more than two months. When this diagnosis was finally made, I was forced to sit out the rest of the season and postseason.
My experience resembles what many doctors around the country consider a growing trend in youth athletics: overaggresiveness in youth sports.
