Basketball is probably my favorite sport to be in. This is not because of the actual game as much as being part of a team so close, we were almost like brothers. I had originally joined basketball in 6th grade to make friends and have fun. That is what it was like during that grade. When 7th grade rolled along, the 7th and 8th grade is one team and we would go to each other's games, things started to get serious. We loved our coach, he pushed us hard to be good players but at the end of the day, we were like a big family. We were a Lutheran school but we were good. We had won a lot of state and national tournaments, in the private school division, in the past but we were not cocky about it. That year has been a particularly tough season. We had conflict and a few of our players, our friends, left. Our coach, Coach Ulrich had broken one of the discs in his back and can’t move around very well. Right before state, one of our best players, Greg, sprained his ankle and can not play as well and needs a lot of bench time. Our rival team played a dirty trick and ended up winning the very close semifinals in state. Nationals has been harder than normal, we lost to a good team right off the bat, who we might have been able to beat otherwise, and we were put into the ladder which is always harder. Here we are in the…