Personal Narrative: My First Basketball Team

I've learned a lot things in my breif time being alive, but only ne of those ideas really stands out to me. It is something that I try to live by and think of all the time. I've leaned that whatever you do, you need to have a passion for it. Without that passion you will never try hard enough.
I learned this only a couple of months ago in my latest basketball season. When we began the season, you could already see kids slacking off and not trying their hardest. In practice everyone was amused, but only a few of us actually were trying to get something out of it. Games were something else, it almost seemed like some of the people on the team didn't want to win, they just wanted it to be over. As I was noticing this I talked to my dad about it. He told me that he had been seeing it as well. After every game we discussed about the kids that were working hard and showing their love of the game, and the kids that were slacking, not trying their hardest, and the consequences of them doing this. Talking to my coach, I found that he knew of this also and was brainstorming ways to alter it. As the season progressed it only became more prvalent.
Later in the season, my coach came to talk to mabout helping my team change our work ethic. I was timid about this, but something needed to change. He

told me to try to encourage our team with positivity because he had seen me yelling, screaming, and showing my emotion, but not in a very positive way. After a week or two, it started to take effect. We were playing better and better basketball.
Towards the end of the season, in a tournament, we were playing some of the best basketball of our lives.

Almost all of the teams in the tournament were considered better than us, but we persevered and got second place. With that tournament placing, we were entered into the state tournament. This is when I truly learned about the importance of passion because our team looked like they didn't even want to play basketball. Something mentally changed jurassically and we were unable to compete at a high level and ended up losing most of our games very poorly. That moment taught me how much passion affects everyone because I could see the passion in the other teams, but not in my

own.
Passion is more than just how much you like something, it's how mch you believe, how much desire you have, and how much you would give for something. I have learned this on many occasions, but none nearly and prevalent as my last basketball season. This I have learned, this I believe.