Manvika M., Magsig Middle School
The Comeback
Other people won't always be happy, but you can always change that with just a shift of perspective. A time when other people around me were upset was when I was at my lacrosse game, and it was the game point, and we were playing against a really challenging team. The score was 8-8 and one of our best players had the ball and the rest of the team was jogging wearily behind her in the blazing sunlight; this was our last game of the season. Now, their goalie was very big and strong, so it took her a lot of courage to go up and shoot the ball. She ran up with so much power and shot the ball in the net! Except the goalie got the ball and passed it back to the other team and they ran up to our goal, scored and got the point. We walked back to our tent with our heads hung low while we heard the other team cheering, but I held my head high knowing what just happened is a way to learn, adapt and change the way we were thinking about this.
While everyone sat down complaining about the other team, I stood up and said, “Guys, we just almost beat one of the hardest teams!” Everyone nodded while I thought of more things to pacify them, but at the end of the tournament everyone was happy because I was trying to be benevolent and lift the spirits up. We all sat down on coolers and blankets under our tent and ate strawberries and whipped cream. We all sat in a circle and said who did good and why.
“She is always lifting other people up and finding the light in the dark,” said one of the girls on my team pointing at me and smiling. I grinned really big and my teammates wrapped their arms around me cheering.
At the end of the day everyone realized they tried their best to beat a really hard team, but all in all we played really well, and my turn of words ended up changing everyone's mindset. At that tournament we all started to look at losing in a different way and know it's not always bad. Now, our team can celebrate the highs and lows together knowing that no matter how many wins or loses we had, we were still a team.
