How to Play Basketball Competitively With Boys When You’re a 12-Year-Old Girl

If you are a young girl who is serious about basketball, then you will need to expect to play with boys your own age rather than girls. At this age, girls are not competitive enough to improve your skills and challenge your perspective. Playing with boys can be awkward and risky for various reasons, but playing with girls is too casual and easy to be anything more than enjoyable.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Prepare yourself to overcome any challenge that may occur when you are playing a basketball game with larger and stronger boys. Prepare yourself by getting in excellent physical shape. Running is a good exercise to build up your endurance and strength. Most important, prepare yourself mentally to play the game. No matter how incredible of a player you are, you are nothing if you are not in the right state of mind. There is no specific way to mentally prepare yourself. Everyone has their own “place” they can go to get focused and calm for the task that lies ahead.
2. Your self-image is also incredibly important when you play sports with guys, especially basketball. If you think you’re not good enough, that you don’t have what it takes, or that you’re going to make a lot of mistakes, you are going to create that kind of luck for yourself. You need to be realistic and honest with yourself. The chances are that if you’re playing competitively with guys, then you’re a good player, so don’t tell yourself otherwise. If you’re not going to be totally honest with yourself, then go for the stars and choose to tell yourself that you are better than you are. Your success depends entirely on how you see yourself and whether you can see yourself being successful and accomplishing your goal. Develop a positive self-image before playing your game.
3. Confidence is key, especially when you are playing with people who are bigger, stronger and scarier than you. People will always try and attack your confidence before they do anything else, because without confidence you are worthless at sports. If you don’t have confidence, there is no way you can go up against guys in basketball because you will not be able to remember your strengths in playing the game if you doubt yourself in the least.
4. In any sport, especially basketball, you need to focus and concentrate with every ounce of energy in your body. Devote yourself to the game, and lose yourself in that concentration. You cannot afford to be distracted or forget what you’re doing for even one moment, because in that moment you can lose the game. You need to be playing the best you can and be mentally and physically focused. If you are not concentrating, there is no way that you will accomplish any level of mastery of the game. If you are going to shoot, pass, dribble, drive, fake or anything else, you need to concentrate on that movement and get it right.
5. Sometimes things don’t go as planned; everyone knows that. In sports you have to realize that. If you have a play set up, and someone agrees to pass you the ball but they don’t, you have to get over it and move on all in one split second. You have to be ready for the next thing that comes your way. You also need to accept the outcome of a game and your performance. If you didn’t do great, it’s all right. Everyone has off days and you’re there to get better. If your team lost, don’t fret; it has to happen sometimes. You need to accept whatever gets thrown at you and make the best of it.
6. Anticipation is a good thing to have when playing basketball with guys. Guys always know what they are going do next and if you can’t pick up on it, your game is gone. You have to be one step ahead of them, thinking about every possible outcome of every move at every second. You have to play basketball as a mental rather than physical game.
7. Most of the time in life, wanting something is not a great plan because usually you’re going to get disappointed. But things are different in basketball. In order to play well and create the possibility of winning, you have to want it with all the strength and power you possess. You have to want it so bad that you would do anything to get it. Playing basketball takes that kind of passion, and in order to play successfully with guys as a 12-year-old girl, you have to be passionate and completely dedicated.