All throughout middle school Mr. Tony Stavrose had been a sort of role model for me. I went to Cascade Middle School, located on Echo Hollow Road in Eugene and Tony was a teacher there. I never had him for any classes, though, because he taught remedial classes, but he was the supervisor for lunch time inside the small gym and every day me and some friends and I would always play a pickup game, and he would sort of observe us as we played. Now one day I asked him if he could teach me about basketball because there is always room for improvement. He told me yes and we went on from there. Because I had asked him for help that day, we had soon built a great friendship that no other kid my age could ask for. I needed help with my foot work, layups, and shooting left hand, what he did was coach me and to both our surprise, I was quickly learning. I easily got better within the first couple of weeks, and I noticed in the pickup games I was in I was scoring and getting to the basket a lot easier. I was already a great shooter, so my overall game was at a great level for my age group (7th grade). Very soon after that Kids Sports was starting up and, like every year, i played on quad the year before but this year was different because I had tried out for the Willamette traveling team, and made the team. We traveled around state, playing in a variety of tournaments. I had great fever coming into every game. Beside that though Stavrose would always give me great confidence and I don’t think I would of become as great a player that I am now without him. Besides basketball, Stavrose taught me self-confidence and to believe in myself whenever a challenge would occur. He also taught me to have respect for others and my environment. I was a pretty troubled kid growing up, I would always start fights in the middle of a game because I was so competitive, I would always fight with the teacher about why I got this wrong and why this is like that and not like this and so forth. In all I was just a troubled kid. I blamed my ignorance on my family, my dad was never home and my grandma was pretty much forced to take care of us, my sister would use drugs and would always fight with her, and my brother was just a awkward person to hang out with so I never really got close to him. The only person I would share my problems with would be Stavrose. He would always listen to me and he always had something to tell me in return. Now granted I would have liked to get close to my family but they didn’t provide the helping hand a person like me needed
