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The Absolutely True Diary: A Part-Time Indian

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Are sports and competition in general just a games that we shouldn’t be so emotional about, or do they provide an outlet for many people, and can they teach valuable life lessons?
I played two sports growing up, baseball and basketball. I enjoyed both but I developed a passion for basketball more than for baseball. I started playing ball when I was in the third grade. My dad coached my older brother and me, and that's when I started to fall in love with the game. In 6th grade I started to play more competitively, when I made the Lake Stevens AAU basketball team. (AAU is select basketball where teams travel to tournaments and such). Unfortunately I wasn’t the most talented out there, so my playing time was limited. I remember the first game of the season I didn’t play the whole game, and I …show more content…

Nobody should like losing. Competition teaches that losing is not okay. They also teach that one can grow and learn from losses and that losing is a part of life. They should teach that one should strive to win, and thus they should want to win more than lose in life. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Arnold the main character is being interviewed by a sports reporter before the big game against Arnold's old school on the Spokane Indian reservation, Arnold is asked if he has anything to prove in this game, and he responds, "I have to prove that I am stronger than everybody else. I have to prove that I will never give up. I will never quit playing hard. And I don't just mean in basketball. I'm never going to quit living life this hard, you know? I'm never going to surrender to anybody. Never, ever, ever."(190). Throughout this book Arnold had been pushed around his whole life, but basketball has given him the opportunity to not be pushed around anymore, and taught him things about himself that he may not have known

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