I announced to him that I’d stop playing when I couldn’t walk. (An aside: my Dad worked for 30 years in a hellishly hot steelmaking plant, and he never was sick—in fact, he never had a headache! When he retired, he got a stomach virus for the first time in his life, and bemoaned to my Mom that now that he was retired, he was going to die!

Well, he made it another 30 years or so. But I recalled our conversation about my quitting basketball after reading Chris Ballard’s Point After in SI, about his 71-year-old Dad continuing to play pick-up games against men half his age, despite two knee replacements and a bad shoulder.

As Ballard notes, “But giving up a game isn’t merely giving up a game.” Exactly.

For me, playing pick-up games against other women is my mental health outlet and a creative outlet, too, when I think about it. Over the past 10 years, my game has gotten better, as I have challenged myself to improve my passing and dribbling skills.

I take true joy in making the perfect pass down the court, a pass that takes imagination to see and creativity to try, and seeing it reach a teammate right in stride for an easy score.