Playing Hard

So today was the last day of the Western Hoopla tournament thingy for basketball. For some reason, our pool contained all the top teams, so we hadn't won any games yet. But finally, luck was on our side and we played Pacifica and won 39-29. I don't know if it was because it was our last day, but everyone played their hardest and we were all pretty pumped. Haha, I was so happy when we won. It felt amazing.
After our game, it turned out that one of the teams for the next game couldn't make it, so the coordinator asked us to play another game. We were all in high spirits and the opponent was Orange (a school at our level) so we fervently agreed. Dang, I wish we hadn't. Everyone was so psyched about winning the previous game that they played really poorly. At first, I was like, oh, we're just not calmed down yet.. we'll catch up after we get focused again. But we never regained focus. We lost the game 11-42.

I mean REALLY??? That's really all we amounted to as a team? Just because we won the previous game, just because the game didn't count, we gave up. If you truly love to do something, shouldn't you give it your all 24/7? It really bothered me that everyone was all smiley afterward. You shouldn't be happy after half-a**ing a game. Not giving your all is being disrespectful to the sport, to your opponents, and to yourself. Oxford students tend to bs things that don't count for credit. But that's HOMEWORK. No one likes to do homework, and homework is not voluntary. Basketball, or any other extracurricular activity is done because a person WANTS to do it and gives up their time and effort to do it. We should not be satisfied with giving less than what we are capable of when it comes to the activities we love to do.

When we had our meeting at the end of the game, I expected our coach to say something about it. But he didn't. Instead, he said that the second game didn't matter so we shouldn't care about it. He said that since we were tired, the score was understandable. OH MY GOODNESS. For one thing, we weren't tired. Why? Because the majority of the second game was played by the bench players. The starters played almost the entire first game, so the bench players shouldn't have been tired. Secondly, this is ORANGE we are talking about! Even if we were tired, if we played our hardest, we shouldn't have lost by more than 15 points. Losing by 30 points is preposterous! Dude, he sort of failed at being a coach at that moment. Isn't it the coach's job to build our love and respect for the sport? How does telling us that it's ok to bs a game fulfill that job??

I don't care about the score. I really don't. Just the other day, we lost 3-83. That's eighty points. Yet I was super happy at the end of that game. Why? Because we played our hardest and the team we played was (much) better than Oxford's varsity team. It's the EFFORT. We could've beat Orange today and gone home with a double victory. But alas, our team just wasn't mentally strong enough. I learned a lesson today. From now on, I'm going to give my all during games no matter what.