Journaling Exercise To Release Painful Emotions (Beyond Basketball) 

Thank you

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I have a question regarding something that happened to me today. I was doing runs at the gym with some of my teammates from my class (2027) with older guys up to 2024. I've played with all of these guys at some point or am now (8th grade, JV, Varsity) there was one player in particular a year older than me that just doesn't like me. I'm not quite sure why. There might be a bit of jealousy there. He was jawing at me the whole 5 hours we were there. I knew I was in control of the situation and wanted to keep him upset, because I knew I was in control and wasn't going to be affected mentally, which I wasn't, for the sake of us winning the games, which we did. During a break I was thinking about how I needed a state championship somewhere down the road and this player I was jawing with might be a variable in achieving that since he's my teammate and might be down the road as well, so I backed off and cut down on the jawing and trying to keep him angry. Nonetheless, he still was jawing with me, calling fouls every time I blocked him or stole the ball he called a foul and every time I called a foul he was talking crazy. It wasn't just normal trash talk though, he was saying stuff like "I'll beat your a**" and "I'll punch your a** right now step up" and was getting in my face, shoving me, grabbing me when I would go up for a finish and full on shoving me when I was playing on ball defense. I wasn't jawing at him, but when he grabbed me I pushed his hand off, when he pushed me I didn't push him back but went right back to where I was before, and was face guarding him. One time he got in my face and starting pushing me saying he was gonna "knock my a** out" all I said was "do it then", "I'm here" "stop talking and do it". While this was happening I knew he wasn't actually going to do anything. He lunged at me once and pretended to try and grab my neck, but I just pushed his hand off and stared at him without saying anything, not moving a muscle. We ended up winning every game mostly due to him missing wide open plays and falling asleep because he was jawing with me, but it was just runs. I'm the most competitive person I know of, and am more than willing to fight someone over a basketball game or keep them angry for the sake of winning a game even if it's just runs, but it was my teammate. I understand that there was no point in jawing, but I feel the need to make sure he knows I'm not taking stuff like that from him, and he's not going to do anything to affect me, which he didn't. I also want to make sure my other teammates get the message that I'm not going to back down to anybody. But in the process I was getting him angry at me, he's probably still angry at me, and hurting my relationship with a player that may affect my chances at a state championship. What can I do now, and what's the best way to handle a similar situation next time? It kind of seemed like a lose lose situation.