I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CHAMPION

→ By Trislyn Maeda (‘23) AN ESSAY

We live in a society where the busy life is the right life, where money, success, and accomplishment are the goals of our life’s pursuits. As students, we all crave achievement, and we know what it looks like too. Sometimes this success comes in the form of a report card; for athletes it’s that and a trophy. But I believe we’ve got it all wrong. The culture we live in has conditioned us to believe that in obtaining tangible success we will gain happiness. And thus we chase achievement in an endeavor to feel complete. However, what happens when we fail or things don’t turn out the way we want even despite our best efforts? Does it mean we will never be happy?

This year I set my mind on becoming a state champion as a varsity basketball athlete. I’ve been playing basketball since I was eight years old. From the beginning, I always loved the sport, the adrenaline rush, the competition, and the way the game challenges one to think beyond personal fitness and skill. However, in my junior season, I didn’t play as much as I had hoped, and my lack of contribution on the court made me feel distant from the team’s successes. We had won the state championship that year, and though I was proud of my teammates and what they accomplished, I felt empty inside. I did not have a sense of personal achievement, and the victory did not feel like it was mine to share. And so, the Monday after that championship night, I got to work; I committed to becoming the best version of myself that I could possibly be for my senior season. I wanted to make an impact. I wanted to feel like a champion.

Senior year came around and my efforts carried me into a starting role on the varsity team and earned me the honor of being the team captain. I always knew that a team captain’s responsibility was to put their teammates’ needs before their own. But now that I was in that position, it oddly seemed more difficult to do; even though I wanted to be a good teammate, I also wanted to be a good player. If I became one thing, it felt as though I was giving up the other. I wanted to give my heart and soul to everyone on my team. However, I learned from the last season that being a team player can sometimes take away from one’s focus and aspirations for themselves, and this year I was aiming for the reward of selfaccomplishment. Still, I understood that if I focused entirely on my own ambitions, I would be losing sight of what had always mattered to me most: being a leader. If everything was about me, I would be no leader at all. Throughout the season, I wrestled to find a balance between these two roles. I didn’t always do a good job of that. However, our team did well, gaining momentum after each game. We became conference champions and took the first seed in the Division 2 HHSAA Girls Basketball State Tournament. We were within reach of the championship title. Everything that I’d worked for felt right around the corner. We made it past the first game of the tournament and headed to the semi-finals ready to take on the fourth-ranked team, Kapaa. We were one game away from having all our hard work pay off, one game away from being champions, and then we lost. We trailed 23 to 8 until the end of the third quarter. With

As one of the players on the team that won the 2022 D2 HHSAA Girls’ Basketball State Championship, I got to cut down the net used in the game. This is a tradition that all winning teams and players get to do after their championship match.