This past weekend I had quite the blast from the past. My hometown hosts an annual alumni basketball tournament for fundraising, and so many people from the area come back to get a little competitive with other classes and teams to see who’s still got it and who’s the most out of shape.

While I definitely fall into that latter category, I find the camaraderie and sportsmanship super fun to come back to. The amount of physical exertion I subject my body to may be another story, but it’s honestly such a good time to make a trip back home for the weekend and catch up with old classmates, teammates, and buddies.

Breaking out an old pair of basketball shoes in some random shipping boxes at home shows how much I play regularly, so it really comes as no surprise that my body is protesting quite a bit now that the weekend is concluded.

I think the most fun part of it all, though, isn’t the competitiveness and playing aspect itself. It’s hanging out with everyone after the games are over on a Saturday night. We ended up going to a small local bar that likely doesn’t see too many patrons on any given night, but that evening it was quite packed with all sorts of friends, classmates, parents, and other family members. Just catching up with everyone and enjoying the moment meant a lot to me.

I was actually talking about this with my girlfriend while we were there. We’re huge on experiencing different cultures and really observing how different things can be from one place to another, and that night we saw it happening before us in a small midwestern bar that was pretty much filled with people who all went to the same high school at one point in their lives. There’s nothing else like the silliness and weird conversations and music that went on in that bar this past Saturday, and that, to me, is one of the coolest reasons to visit my hometown from time to time.

So now that my few pairs of basketball shoes are back in their old shipping boxes, it doesn’t mean that that part of me is also put away in storage. Rather, I feel quite revitalized and happy to know that I come from a community full of unique and fun people that can all claim they were from my hometown.