First game of states

Starting on May 7, 2008, we the Punahou baseball team would be playing for our 5th state baseball championship. The first team that we were to play is Roosevelt. Going into the tournament, we were the number one seed, and were expected to win. In the end we won, but it was not the kind of win that we wanted. This was because from the start, we were taking the team too lightly.
Before the game started, we were doing our usual pregame hitting in the batting cages, warmed up the same, and it seemed like we were going into the game like any other. But it was our attitudes that changed the way we played. We came in thinking lets 10 run rule these guys and go home. We thought that we could just come into the state tournament and destroy the other teams.

Because we came in with that attitude, we did not come with our best game. Right off the back that showed. We had a season high 5 errors in just the first 3 innings. Roosevelt took an easy 5-0 lead. But luckily we came back with 6 runs to top that. It was pretty even the rest of the game and they made us fight for the win. We were each scoring one run an inning and matching each other. Finally it was the last inning, and the score was tied at 7-7. But Roosevelt scored a run and we were now losing with only 3 outs left. But in the bottom of the inning 3 of our players clutched up and we scored 2 runs to win with a final score of 9-8.

Now that we had just seen our entire season flash in front of our eyes, we decided that we needed to change the way that we think. We were no longer going to go into the game thinking that we were the dominant team. Just the better team on that day. This is because it is not the better team that wins, but the team that performs better on that day. We wanted to be the better team on that day. By thinking this way, we would have to try our hardest to win and be that team.