The burning pain will never leave my mind. The torn calices and renewed bruises have never been so vivid within my mind. Day after day, practice after practice, I trained to bring the trophy home from the sectionals. It was the first time in over twenty years that my small town team had been able to play our way into the tournament. The season had been tough, many twisted ankles and joint problems wrecked games that could have brought the trophy home. The effort towards winning this extreme tournament could have only been illustrated by the joining of sweat and tears on the hard wooden floors.

In the small town of Altamont, New York where I was raised from young, I was registered on a church basketball team. I had been playing basketball recreationally for several years before, but never on the competitive level that my team had reached this year. Because I played sports from a young age, they had always meant a lot to me. The basketball season was phenomenal, with many wins and few loses, we were able to make our way into the end of season tournament. Within this competition, many unknown teams and players came up against us. Never before in my life had I seen such extreme desire to crush opponent teams. These kids were willing to go around the rules to get what they wanted, showing how strong their desires were to win this. With the intense competition came many hits and pushes while referees turned their backs, and even while watching. This tournament was a very hard challenge for us, which was ended short with only two games played and lost. Though the tournament was short for us, it taught me much about peoples desires of victory and how they will strive to extremes in order to obtain what they desire the most.

The ability to keep sportsmanship while trying your hardest to achieve a goal in anyway is a hard skill to master. The only way to master the ability to stay friendly in intense competition is to experience others doing the exact opposites. During games that I have played in, I’ve seen many violations of sportsmanship, most of which are caused by the desire of victory. I’ve grown to hold the values to sportsmanship very close to my heart through the many years I played sports and even in friendly games.

People will resort to many different means in order to get their goals. They will even go as far as to give up their dignity to gain what is to some a small trophy, yet to others, their hearts desire.