3… you feel thousands of voices crawling down your back. 2… you  look up to see the ball hurdelling towards your face. Miraculously, you embrace it into your hands. 1… left with no other choice, you launch the ball towards the hoop, praying that it goes in. Finally, after what feels like forever, the ball lands in the hoop, and the breathtaking swish is all you needed. You did it; you won. It’s an exhilarating feeling, until you’re on the wrong side of the ball.

          As the running timer finally diminished to 0 for the final time, and the clear 21:20 indicated the winner, it felt like a dream. It might have been a fifth grade basketball game, but the roaring crowd of about 25 parents, the beaming lights of the middle school gym, and the taste of one-month-old gatorade lingering in my mouth was enough for it to feel like the NBA championship. There was nothing blocking us now; we just beat the only team with the matching undefeated record, the Bethlehem Eagles. We were approaching the playoffs as the number one seed; what could possibly go wrong?

          If you answered nothing, you’d be right, for about one game. I don’t know whether it was the fact that it was 8:00 on a Sunday morning, and the previous night I had stayed up watching Guardians of the Galaxy. Maybe it was the fact that my opponents were my teammates less than a year ago; who knows? What I do know is that we were dealing with a pretty big problem; we’d barely grasped a win against Niskayuna who we had formerly beaten by 30. I don’t know what got into us; we’d gone from undefeated to..well I guess undefeated, but that’s not the point. We should’ve demolished this team, but instead we just barely escaped this game alive. If something didn’t happen fast, we were going to get slammed by the team that just put us in this number one position a few weeks ago. 

          Something did happen alright; our coach sat us down outside of that gym, and for someone who just advanced to the championship, he acted like we just robbed a bank. At this point it didn’t matter what he said, though; it all depended on this one game. A team with 1000 wins could play a team with one, and if they lose, none of those former wins would matter. If we lost this game, we would be second place, and like Abby Lee Miller always says, second place is the first to lose. Of course, no one said this; that’s not exactly great words of advice for some ten year olds about to play their rival team. Nonetheless, all of us were thinking about it throughout the end of the Niskayuna game until the final “1..2..3..LADY DUTCH!!” 

          I got on the court and played my absolute heart out, running until the air in my lungs had gone on vacation; the sweat on my face felt like it was a streaming river, and my throat was like a desert. The first half went amazing; we were winning, and it felt like a huge weight got lifted off my shoulders…until it was dropped back onto me in the third quarter. Bethlehem got mad to the point that they were almost like actual Eagles. They were pushing and yelling, anything to enhance their shot of winning, and it worked. Outhustled is the only correct word to describe the way I was feeling; it felt like I had just ran into a brick wall. I’m not joking; I had just got screened so hard that it felt like I ran into a brick wall. But somehow we held onto that lead until about 20 seconds left in the game; we were up by one, and all we had to do was not let them score. I bet you’d never guess what happened; they scored. It was like a fever dream, and this moment has played in my mind probably thousands of times. The girl ran to the corner and desperately launched a three pointer, and it went in. Of course, with two seconds left, the game was over; I was officially a loser.

          I’m not one to cry, never have been, never will be, and I proved that on that day. While all my teammates were balling their eyes out, I actually giggled a bit because my teammate had looked at me weird. Our team went over to the bench and talked it out; I mean, the coach didn’t have much to say. What was he supposed to tell a bunch of fifth graders that just lost a championship by one? Yeah guys, you just lost, what losers. Imagine doing that; it couldn’t have been me. It was a short and sweet talk, and then we just walked out of the gym. I don’t know what happened though because after that talk, I almost went into a stage of oblivion. I could hear everyone talking, and I was perfectly calm, but it was like all my social tastebuds went numb. After a chain of automatic “Thanks for coming,” I finally reached the car. I got in and just sat there; I had no clue what to do. I felt like I was stuck in quicksand; moving or crying wouldn’t do anything, so I just reclined my chair and fell asleep. After that the day is a blur, but one thing that stuck with me was the drive to never lose against Bethlehem again.

          Pertinacious (adj.) - extremely or objectionably persistent. Some might define this word as being stubborn; I’d have to strongly disagree. Basketball has taught me so many things, such as teamwork, sportsmanship, friendship, but most importantly to never give up. That day might’ve been atrocious, terrible, horrendous; any words that are defined as ‘bad’ would describe the day perfectly. I without a doubt labelled myself a loser that day, but throughout my experience with basketball I’ve learned that this just isn’t true. Never did I give up after that day. I actually worked a hell of a lot harder, so although I gave myself the title of loser back in fifth grade, I strongly disagree now.

-Michaela L.