My name is Jackie, and I’m in the fifth grade. I’m on the school’s basketball team, and that day my teammates and I were competeing against the Tigers in the state championships. We’re the one of the top teams in Kentucky, so my teammates and I set very high standards for ourselves. And I’m captain of the team, so everyone, even the coach , expects me to help my teammates win this championship. But, you see even a team captain gets nervous sometimes. Reality check. We were competeing against the Tigers, last year’s state champion. It was likely we could lose. Anyway, we were just one point down from the Tigers, and there wasn’t much time to lose. It was better to tie in points with the other team than to lose, and, since this was a tense time, my teammates threw the ball to the captain. I jogged down the court, dribbling the ball. I was about to make the 1-pointer, so we’ll tie with the other team, but then thought: What if I could make the 3-pointer? That’ll even be better than tieing with the other team! So I jogged to the 3-pointer, and I threw atthe net. It was going into the net! I thought excitedly. But at the last minute, the ball bounced off the rim of the net, and crashed down to the floor, and at that second, the buzzer rang, signaling the end of the game! The Tigers had won the state championships, and we lost, because of me! Wendi, a popular girl from my class, started yelling to me that I didn’t deserve to be the team captain. She always wore the best clothes and tons of makeup. Like clothes could matter in basketball! And how could she even see the baall in all that eye makeup? But everyone else started booing at me, and I felt so embarrassed!