My Losing Season; Post 4

After experiencing a winning season in his sophmore year, Conroy will never again experience a winning season. As a senior, right when he is expected to start, Sophmore, Tee Hooper, sweeps the starting spot from him. Although he never starts on this team at the beginning of the season, he begins to be named captain, starting with the biggest game of the Season at Clemson. The Clemson game is hoped to be the defining point in the season though they lost the game by a very sizeable margin. These sizeable losses seem to continue, and the backups which Conroy is a consistent member of, seem to constantly flow in at the end of games when Conroy seems to take over the game, and come out with a good amount of points.

My Losing Season; Post 3

After Conroy's freshman season, he was offered a full ride scholarship to stay at The Citadel. He endured the remainder of his freshman year by the help of seniors who seemed to not care, much like he felt. These were the people who influenced the way he lived the rest of his college life in the Barracks of R company. At The Citadel the class system takes extreme priority over the rank system. The lowest senior private can order around the highest ranked junior. This is shown when juniors constantly try to run Conroy out of school through pushups and screaming orders. Jim Plunkett, a senior in his company, pulls Conroy out and sends him into his room to be saved.

These guys are the ones who helped Conroy make his way through his freshman year which eliminates most students at the Citadel. Many more students leave by choice than are run out due to grades. It would be nice to have this type of person around at any college where you know noone, but at The Citadel it seems as if it was mandatory.

My Losing Season; Post 2

After Pat graduated from high school, he had only one option for college. It was The Citadel. The Citadel is a military school and from what Pat had seen from his father up to this point in his life, this was not the direction he wanted to take his life. Due to his parents not having anywhere close to the money to send him to college for long, he walked on as a basketball player. Conroy was promised by coach Mel Thompson that he and the other freshman basketball players that they would not endure the wrath of the plebean system. During his first week at the Citadel 1/3 of his freshman basketball team quit and left The Citadel, and by the end of the season Half of his Freshman team which won every single game, save a game against Clemson. One player even offered to let Conroy leave and go live with his family and attend another college in Georgia. Though Conroy would have loved all of these things he wasn't able to both because of his fathers rage for leaving a military school, and the fact that his parents could not pay for any other school.

My Losing Season by Pat Conroy

My losing season is a memoir by Pat Conroy specifically speaking out against the Plebean system at The Citadel where he attended college, while recapping his senior basketball season there. He also goes into some detail about his childhood life in various cities. Like his other stories he speaks out against his father and the abuse he put upon his family, but in this particular recount all the stories hold full truth and there is no editing.

The memoir begins with his move to Orlando where he first began to play basketball at age 9 and found a natural skill with the game. He proceeded to play along with the black players on the other side of town despite being much younger and much smaller. After growing close to some of these players his father was reassigned to another location and this forced the family to make the third of many moves.