I’m a hair under 6'1".

That’s a tall lady, folks.

And I’ve been tall my entire life to the point where it would shock people to hear that I was much younger than they assumed I was (see the story about my very-normal-yet-very-confusing coloring abilities as a 2-year-old here).

My mom had to carry my birth certificate with her when we traveled to prove that I was under 24 months and could fly for free. I was always given the adult menu at restaurants and would watch in disbelief as my very small step-sister was given the kids menu until she was well into her teens (20s?). (Note: I always wanted the kids menu!) I was asked “how’s the weather up there?” more times than I was asked “how are you?” as a teenager. TALL has always been my identity. More than any other adjective.

I even wrote a poem about being tall when I was in middle school.

I can really feel the sad desperation oozing out from between the lines.

And yes, you might have guessed it, I played the tall people sports — basketball and volleyball.

(I like to reminisce about the time that I had a short stint as a goalie for an international soccer team only because my friends thought that my long limbs could block any attempts on goal. They did not factor in that with long limbs comes inherent awkwardness and minimal hand-eye coordination. We did win 2nd place in our final tournament, which means that I did a pretty good job in goal, but I also walked away with a broken thumb, so I wouldn’t call it an overwhelming success.)

I started playing basketball pretty young — it was one of my dad’s favorite things to do with me (he’s 6'6"), and I was put on my first recreation league team in 4th grade.

Rec leagues were usually coached by the dads of the community… well, the ones that could hold it together. I’ll never forget one of the dads in the stands getting kicked out of a 4th grade basketball game for swearing at a ref because his kid had a ball stolen very cleanly from her. Yeesh.

I was sought after by the dad-coaches of our town because of my height and coach-ability. There was always a “try out” for these teams, but really the rec center leadership was just trying to make sure that one team wasn’t super stacked compared to another team. I loved the tryouts because I was always the tallest and knew that I’d get along with anyone on any team I was assigned to.

I was a nice kid. Sometimes too nice. I always shook hands and introduced myself to the girl I would be guarding each game. It felt weird hip-checking and boxing out a stranger, but sometimes it was weirder trying to be friendly with someone that was clearly terrified of me because they were a full foot shorter than me.

My basketball career reached it’s peak in about 8th and 9th grade. I was on an undefeated rec league team, I had made my school team, and I was on a traveling team. If you can believe it, I didn’t make my 7th grade school team. I’m still not sure why the coaches at my junior high didn’t like me, but I ended up making the B team in 8th grade and then rocketing onto the A team as a freshman in high school with coaches who were very confused as to why I didn’t make the 7th grade team. I used to tell myself that Michael Jordan didn’t make his school team once — I loved proving those coaches wrong.

I was always the one to perform the tip off at the beginning, and I played the majority of minutes every game. I was never a top scorer because I was too much of a team player, and instead I won awards for my rebounding and assists. I felt like Scottie Pippen and had a poster of Michael Jordan in my room (next to my Justin Timberlake poster, who do you think I am?). Basketball was my jam.

Yes, that was a Space Jam reference 😉

Gotta love cheesy sport certificates from the 90s.

One of my favorite things about basketball was the trading cards. I had connections to a sports card shop in Chicago during the prime years of the Chicago Bulls, and there was nothing that I wanted to spend my money on more than crisp decks of basketball cards.

I bought a giant 4" binder with pages and pages of card protector sheets where I would house every single card I bought, regardless of the player or the cards’ perceived worth. I would get duplicate cards all the time and slide them into the same sheet so that my collection wouldn’t get too out of control. I was obsessed with keeping them in pristine condition, but I almost always ended up bending their corners because I took them in and out of the sleeves to admire them too many times.

It got a little bit out of control. I had accumulated over 2,000 cards in my collection within a matter of a year or so.

Some highlights of my gigantic card collection.

Chicago Bulls cards always had the prime real estate

and I tried to price some of the cards that looked pricey.

But there was just nothing more satisfying than cracking open a new deck of cards and then feeling the excitement build as you carefully peeled them off of each other to see if you had a rare or expensive card. (I rarely did.)

Over the years, I’ve held onto my collection, but it’s mainly been collecting dusts in basements or closets. It was time to offload the collection onto someone who would cherish them a bit more. I decided that I would bring my collection to a card trading store here in Austin to see if any of the cards were worth anything, and I found a store nearby that gave me that same familiar excitement as I walked through the front door.

It was exactly like the card stores of my youth.

I met with the owner of the shop and he flipped through my binder, pulling out any cards that he thought might be worth something. Then he gathered up about a dozen or so cards and plopped down at his laptop where he proceeded to search eBay for recent sales to see how much they might be worth. The amounts ranged from $1 to $50, but nothing too crazy. There was a Shawn Kemp card that he told me to hold onto — when Shawn Kemp dies, it’s price could skyrocket into the low 4-digit range.

But other than that, nothing that piqued his interest. I asked what the best way was to get rid of the cards, and he recommended selling the entire lot on eBay to someone or donating to an elementary school. Before I left the store, I bought three packs of cards — unopened but from the 90s — and watched as nothing of any value came out of the purchase. Felt just like being a kid again 😂

I ended up putting my collection up for sale for $50 on OfferUp and found someone in town that wanted to buy them for his son. Perfect. I met him at a tamale restaurant in northwest Austin and talked shop with the dad for a while (most important question when gauging someone’s character: who were your favorite Bulls players from the 90s?) before saying goodbye to the collection.

It felt good.

My basketball career didn’t last forever. Something shifted during my sophomore year. I felt the game veer towards prioritizing competition and winning instead of growth, development, and the pure love of the game. My coaches demanded more — more training in the weight room, more practices before and after school, more, more, more. But I didn’t want to give more. I wanted to be a good student. I wanted to be a part of other clubs. I wanted to get into a good college based on my GPA. I wasn’t one of the popular jock girls because I was odd and quirky. Being tall was my identity, but basketball wasn’t.

So I did the bare minimum for a while to see how it felt. I still played my heart out in games, had a lot of playing time, but didn’t put in the extra effort outside of games. I lived for the games, didn’t care about practice. And I’m sure my coaches could tell.

The breaking point happened during my sophomore year. Early in the season, I broke my nose during a scuffle under the basket while trying to nab a loose ball. A girl’s elbow came down hard on the bridge of my nose, and I had to wear one of those embarrassing nose/face guards for a couple weeks afterwards. It might have been intimidating to the other teams, but I just felt like an idiot.

When our schedule matched us up against that team again later that season, one of my coaches took me aside and said, “Alright, Ellen. Now’s your chance to get even and break her nose.” I admit that it might have been a joke, but their tone of voice did not really make me think that was the case. It left me feeling icky.

I didn’t make the varsity team my junior year and instead put all of my energy into a program called Amigos de las Americas — commonly referred to as “Peace Corps for high schoolers.” My new identity was firmly placed on my ability to speak Spanish and my desire to help those in poverty in developing countries. I held onto that identity for while, but just like basketball, it didn’t end up being completely me.

Recently my husband and I had a conversation about how sports helped us deal with the ups and downs that life throws at us. We are much more flexible and adaptable because of the skills we learned through teams sports, and we have a much higher threshold for failure because we constantly failed in sports (you literally can’t win them all).

And that’s the part of basketball that I appreciate — my identity as a tall woman who is adaptable, flexible, and willing to take risks. It’s served me very well.