Challenges come in all sizes, shapes, and forms, but it’s how we approach them and persevere that determines how we learn and grow. Our response to these challenges will determine how we are impacted, and how we will face life and future tests. Whether we relentlessly work to overcome or quickly give in, our lives will be changed. Even though I am still young, I’ve already faced difficulties that have, and will continue to, shape my life. A major issue that I struggled with, in sports especially, has been my confidence. While I have always been dedicated and worked my best, sometimes it’s hard to believe in yourself completely. I think that my hockey team’s game in the State Semifinals against Troy Sting last spring happened to be a fitting example of this challenge. Although we weren’t respected by Troy Sting, we overcame adversity while our confidence as individuals and as a  team grew. We ensured Traverse City hockey earned the respect it deserves, but more importantly, we took away many important life lessons.
    Arguably the best Traverse City hockey team of the previous five years, my team ingeniously used our advantages, and used our strengths to our benefit. We used our advantages to become the talented team we are now. One thing that gave our team superiority is our world class coaching. Our head coach has played high level hockey, and slowly, has been passing his knowledge onto us. Followed by our other coaches Steve, and Dave, our coaching staff is one to be reckoned with. Unlike the teams we play from downstate, we almost have the exact team each year. This always give us an advantage over these teams, because we’ve known each other longer, and have created strong bonds. Those attachments improve our chemistry, which overall helps us create plays to beat the opponent. When we use our assets to our advantage, our team could overcome any difficulty.
    Because we are a team from Traverse City, we usually don’t get much respect. The other teams we face usually doubt us, and don’t think we can compete. When these teams doubt us, we tend to impugn ourselves. Because of this, most of the team, including me, had lost confidence in ourselves, and we were scared that there wasn’t a way we could find success. I especially started lacking confidence in myself, and began struggling to find inspiration to keep going, and to show these other teams that we can be better than them. Even through working as hard as I currently thought possible for myself, I still couldn't seem to get over that barrier that is an absence of confidence. With a whole team lacking confidence, we did not know where we were going to find inspiration to push through, and finish out this tournament. Even though we had a lack of inspiration and confidence, Troy Sting happened to be an obstacle in the road to a State Championship title. But the question now was, where are we going to find the inspiration and confidence to succeed?
     The answer may sound cliché, but it's much more simple and obvious than it may seem. The simple answer is that we needed to play our hearts out, and take inspiration from previous successes and failures. Although we all took that simple answer, some people on my team including myself took all the extra confidence we could. Before the game, Coach played an inspirational clip from the 2004 movie, Miracle. Many of us took this inspirational message and applied it to the game, which ended up giving us more confidence throughout the game. Through the entirety of the game, we built on the little successes we each had in order to gain the confidence we needed. Even I quickly came out of my shell when I realized that we could play this team, and that we had a good chance to win. Throughout the game, I started to weave good shifts together, which not only helped me realize I could conquer this barrier, but it also helped my teammates play to the best of their ability. Even though we didn’t end up winning, we gained respect for ourselves, and showed that even with self doubt and lacking confidence, we can still be a great  team if we can believe in each other. If we believe in each other we can believe in ourselves too. 
     Marilyn Monroe once said “I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself...” I find that this quote represents my example perfectly. Although we didn’t win, we had a bigger life take away than the Troy Sting did. I know that I especially learned a lot about myself as a person, and as a hockey player. I learned that even when nothing seems as though it can go your way, with enough belief it can, and with hard work, anything is achievable. In addition, I learned that taking the smallest positive messages, and using those as inspiration to keep working and never give up, can help us live our life easier, and how we want it to be. As a person, I learned that I am an extremely hard worker, and that when I tried and believed, that there wasn’t any barrier that I can't overcome. Yes, there were even more that I could go on about, but this one game happened to have tons of significance to me.
     Overcoming the odds can be very challenging, but getting past those challenges is what makes us who we are. Whether you work hard to pass them, or are lackadaisical, and don’t give it your all, your future will be affected by how hard you try now. If you want respect, you need to be the one working harder every day, and you need to do what others won’t do to overcome adversity. Everything is up to you, and if you make the easy decision now, life could get much more difficult in the future. I took harder route, and even though I may not have appeared successful, I became the real champion that day, because I learned more than anyone did. That made me the most powerful person, because someone with lots of knowledge can beat anyone with more skill or strength than they may have. In the end of that day, if you can stand up to your self doubt and become more confidence, you will be the successful person.