Learning to See What’s Around Us
One of the beauties of sports is watching the game evolve as the players evolve. The quality of sports progresses as players develop in age and ability. A basketball game with six year olds is hardly the same as a game with sixteen year olds. The more one’s body, mind, and skills mature, the more one is able to move and play at higher levels with greater complexity. One of these skills in basketball that progresses as people mature is vision. The six year old dribbles with their head down because focusing on bouncing the ball is a challenging task that requires their full attention. This child is not aware of their other teammates or the defense because their vision is very limited and tied up with their personal space. However, the sixteen year old has a higher level of vision that allows them to be aware of the other players on the court and read the open spaces. The sixteen year old is not wrapped up only in themselves while dribbling, but has their head up to see the entirety of what is around them. This awareness helps them to operate more effectively. Vision builds one’s awareness on the court.
Awareness Brings Responsibility
The more a player is aware of what is happening around them, the more they are able to make informed decisions to score or stop the other team from scoring. However, being more aware through broader vision can also be overwhelming. It is too overwhelming for the six year old to pick their head up because their vision is not developed enough. If they tried to look around for their teammates while dribbling the ball and running, they would quickly panic and lose their dribble, stumble, or pick the ball up and hunch over in a safe position. They are quickly paralyzed by the extended awareness out of fear of losing the ball.
The Development of Vision
Vision and awareness are skills that open up the game to new possibilities and horizons for players, but if they are not ready for this kind of awareness, it can overwhelm them. This is why the development of vision is a natural progression that occurs. Each year the player gets more confident through experience and practice to extend their vision beyond their own personal space. They soon can handle their own bodily movements and become aware of what is immediately surrounding them. Then they can master their own movements and become aware of what is farther away. Ultimately they are able to see the entire court in all of its dimensions. No longer does their awareness of everything else in their environment of the court overwhelm them and force them to ball up, but it invites them to play in more creative and complex ways.
The more a basketball player can see the fullness of the court, the more they can see the open spaces. Greater vision brings greater awareness of the other players, but it also reveals where the openings are on the court. This helps make the player aware of the possibilities for their actions. If a player is aware of the possibilities to create chances to score and get into open spaces then they will do a better job putting their team in chances to win. This skill opens up the game into a more creative dimension. The player is no longer locked into one choice, one possibility, one move through their tunnel vision, but broadens their horizon of how they can play the game. This makes them a more dynamic player and harder to beat.
Awareness in Life
The development of vision and awareness in sports matches the development seen in life. A child that is six years old experiences life in their own world, only aware of themselves and sometimes their immediate surroundings. A couple of years later, they become opened up to the thoughts and feelings of others, and their vision extends to a broader environment. This continues to grow through adolescence and adulthood. It is overwhelming when a ten or eleven year old is becoming aware of what people think about them or the different dynamics in their systems like school or family. This development of vision can be something that is difficult to handle because it might be too much too soon. Like in basketball, this awareness of what is around you can make you stumble or stop playing the game by hunching over and balling up. We can get anxious, fearful, or upset because of this extended awareness. However, this development of vision in basketball and in life is not meant to force us into balling up out of fear or embarrassment but to explore our environments by stepping into open spaces and venture to create new chances. This awareness leads to greater exploration and growth of our abilities as people.
Final Thoughts
The skill of vision helps us pick our heads up as players to see the fullness of the court in all of its dimensions. Like a player, our awareness should not be fixated on other people and their positioning leading us to get overwhelmed by the stimulation. Rather, we should be aware of others but focus on looking for open space to move into and opportunities to create for ourselves and those around us. This vision helps us see the possibilities around us and gives us an understanding to move into those spaces and create them into real opportunities. Gradually, like players, people mature in their awareness as they grow up and this helps them become better in touch with the world around them to make better decisions.
