My Greatest Rival Has No Idea I Exist

Secret Competitions

It is surprisingly difficult to get ejected from a community basketball tournament for families. And yet, my brother managed it.

I played a lot of basketball as a kid. I wasn’t bad at it. I wasn’t amazing, but I could hold my own.

When I was thirteen, my brothers and I entered a three-on-three tournament—three players per team, rotating through games all day. I was excited. A day of shooting hoops, a canteen, snacks. This was going to be fun.

Until we played The Very Cool Family.

You know the type—everyone in the club knew them. They weren’t just good at basketball; they were cool about it.

They were the kind of people who made winning look effortless. Like they’d been genetically gifted a better understanding of sports, and hair.

The Very Cool Family consisted of: Handsome brother, pretty sister and a cousin whose features remain a blur, but I assume were equally luminous.

Part way through the first half—this is where everything fell apart.

Because after, ahem, politely disputing a foul call, one of my brothers—who had never been a fan of Handsome Brother—got himself ejected.

Not just from the game. From the entire stadium.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a community basketball tournament, but again, let me assure you: getting ejected from an entire stadium is no small feat.

It’s not like professional basketball where there are referees and security personnel just waiting to throw people out. No, this was a high school gym, where the worst punishment you usually faced was getting your Gatorade knocked over.

Yet somehow, my brother was banished.

Just like that, our team was down a player. But that’s okay, right? We still had two people. We could just play one short.

Except no.

As my ejected brother disappeared through the stadium doors, my mother—without hesitation—raised her hand and said:

‘I’ll play.’

Let me just pause here for a moment so you can sit with this.

As a thirteen-year-old girl, there are many things that feel humiliating. Being forced to play basketball with your own mother against the coolest people you’ve ever met is near the top of that list.

I wanted the ground to swallow me whole. I wanted to time-travel or spontaneously combust.

We lost, obviously.

For years, I thought of that moment as pure cringe. But now—as a parent—I have a different perspective.

Good on my mum. She didn’t hesitate, she just stepped in.

And yet—despite all my supposed growth, despite considering myself an evolved human—when I saw Handsome Brother again recently, standing on the sidelines of my son’s basketball game (because, oh yes, our sons now play against each other), do you know what I felt?

A deep, visceral, all-consuming need to win.

As if, somehow, this would be my redemption. As if anyone—anyone at all—remembered that tournament except for me. As if my 13-year-old self would look upon me and say, ‘You did it. You avenged us.’

We lost.

All that to say: Sometimes, the best revenge isn’t success. It’s writing about it thirty years later in a newsletter, lol.

Some rivalries last a lifetime, and others exist entirely in your head.

Then there are the ones you don’t even realise you’re still playing.

The problem with secret competitions is that they don’t exactly bring out the best in you.

They show up in writing too—just with different scoreboards. Instead of points, it’s book deals, festival invites, or any other weird metric you can get your hands on or quasi-invent.

It’s tempting to try measure your progress against someone else’s, as if that will somehow prove you’re on the right track. And yet, there’s not really a right track, or even a track.

The only person keeping score is you.

Of course, despite knowing all this, I still catch myself wanting to crush Handsome Brother at a sport I haven’t played since high school.

Because apparently, some lessons take longer to sink in.

And others refuse to sink in at all.

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A drawing

I was COMMISSIONED TO CREATE AN ARTWORK (asked by friend to draw a cartoon) loosely based around the idea of woman taking up swords and generally approaching life with a ‘we’ve got this’ energy.

I drew a few different options. The good ones I’m proud of, and in addition to giving to her, are submitting places. Here’s one I like, but not enough to maintain exclusivity of:

Bye for now,

Katherine