My Life as a Player

Nichole Jackson, a sophomore guard at Auburn Riverside High School in Auburn, Wash., will be writing a diary for HoopGurlz.com this season, offering insights on her experiences as a high-school girl's basketball player. This is her first entry.

PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON

December 1, 2006

Basketball has been on my mind since I was six. I first started playing basketball because of my dad, Ken, when I lived in Arizona. He and my mom have always been there for me when it came to hoops and sacrificed everything for me.

I remember it like it was yesterday: I was in a coed league and I was the only girl playing and the guys would get really mad at me because of

Nichole Jackson

course I was a girl who had game! They would foul me and try to push me around, but I wouldn’t give up. In my mind, I was thinking, "Hey, they can foul me all they want because I’m just going to go to the free-throw line to shoot some more shots." I was just out there to have fun. I just liked playing basketball with the guys. None of the other girls knew how to play.

When I played on my coed team, people would come up to me after the game and ask where I was going to go to high school so they could watch me play. (If I play like this now, watch out!), When I wasn’t playing basketball I would hang out with my friend Tyler. We would always go swimming together at his house and his family loved me. My dad didn’t like it very much because I was his little girl and another guy was taking me from him, he felt. But to me, Tyler was just a friend.

I was very much a tomboy when I was little. My mom would always try to get me into pink dresses and I would refuse to wear them. I would wear only basketball clothes, jeans, and my hair in a pony tail with a head band. To this day, that’s usually what I wear.

We ended up moving back to Washington a while later, but I still think about those days in Arizona. I wonder what Tyler is up to.

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Nichole Jackson has been a fixture on HoopGurlz.com, as she was a perennial selection to all-tournament teams in youth-basketball events conducted by the website. Last year, Nichole started as a freshman for Auburn Riverside, which advanced to the semifinals of the Washington State 4A tournament. As a sophomore this year, Nichole will run the point for a team expected to be one of the top two in the Washington State 3A classification. A member of the National Honor Society, Nichole hopes to study communications in college and go into broadcasting. Click here to view Nichole's player profile.