Editor’s Note
By Danny Kelleher
Editor-in-Chief
I’ve never quite been the best basketball player; in fact, it’s safe to say that I’ve consistently been one of the worst two players on every single Manhattan Beach Youth Basketball team I’ve ever been on. But regardless of inability, MBYB has been one of the most unexpectedly awesome parts of my life for the last seven years.
Until sixth grade, baseball had always been pretty much the only sport I played. When my friend Alex (who’s now La Vista’s Executive Opinion Editor) told me his dad was coaching and that his team needed a seventh-round pick, I decided to just go for it. I had a great time. Scoring my first layup in the second-to-last game of the season was one of the most pathetically memorable moments of my “tween” years, and I think my incompetence fully hit me when I realized I had finished my first season with more fouls than points.
Seven years later, Alex’s father Paul has been my coach five of the six seasons I’ve played. Last weekend, our team, coached by Paul once again and aptly named “The Black Panthers” after our ebony uniforms, won the championship. Led by Costa senior Nick Rigler, we never lost a game except to forfeit.
As we took on team after team, what seemed to be apparent was that all the kids on all the teams, pretty much without exception, loved being out there.
It’s a shame that there aren’t recreational leagues for baseball, football, volleyball and the like for high school students around this community. There are definitely excesses of kids within the area that would relish the opportunity to go out and play organized sports in a competitive, recreational manner, and even if most of us no longer play sports at the high school level, we still love the thrill of athletically vying to win.
This ode to MBYB comes as the senior class reaches a time of year when we’re all marking down our “lasts.” I debated in my last Model United Nations conference at UC Berkeley earlier this month, and I can already feel that day in May when I’ll finish my last La Vista production night looming. As insignificant as a last MBYB game might seem, that league has been one of the most consistently enjoyable activities of my upbringing, and I don’t think I’m the only kid at this school who’d say that. It’s the dependable niches that most of us will miss about this community, from MBYB to MUN, and as the year winds down it’s all starting to hit.
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