Losing can be so frustrating. This is my third year as avarsity starter on the field hockey team, and our combined record is 2 wins, 33losses and one tie. Go ahead and laugh, even I'll admit it's pretty sad. We wonone game and tied one my freshman year, won one game my sophomore year and so farthis year we're 0-4. I can't say all the losses were 1-0, but they weren't alltotal blow outs. Some of them were, but we've learned that even a 7-0 loss can bea good game. We've also felt what it's like to win 7-1 or 4-2 in overtime (myfirst high school game ever! Unfortunately, it all went downhill fromthere.)

It's not that our team is bad; we have a lot of talent, we justdon't know how to use our strengths to our advantage. We just can't find astrategy that works. It seems like in the games we know we're going to bedominated, we play a hundred times better, and those we think we'll win end upbeing big losses. I wish there were some obvious answer like, "Oh! Maybe ifwe move her to inner and her to center link," but we've learned that that'snot the case.

I love field hockey and my team. We're all good friends andhave a lot of fun together at practices and games. We have team bonding dinnersbefore big games, go out for each other's birthdays, and do things to buildspirit. Every game, we try as hard as we can to win. But it seems like no matterhow hard we play, or how well we do, it's not good enough. It's really depressingand frustrating, but we don't know what else to do.

I know winning isn'teverything, but it would be nice to get some reward for all our hard work anddedication. We play with pulled muscles and even broken bones (that would be me.Hey, I love the game and want to help my team as much as I can.). We also playthrough asthma attacks mid-game, no permanent goalie and plenty of otherimpediments.

We practice in the rain, the blazing sun, freezingweather, or a muddy field with grass that hasn't been cut in weeks. We run andsprint for hours. We get no respect and everyone thinks we're a joke, but that'sfar from the truth. I've never seen a team with as much heart, soul, dignity andclass. All I can say is - win or lose - I am grateful to be part of this team. Inthe end, all that matters is the friends I made, how much fun I had and the factthat I can probably outrun half the cross-country team.