“Helen I swear to god, I’m going to slit your throat if you shoot one more three over me… Helen!!!”

Helen and I go way back, I knew her from my childhood through the good and the bad, we were always fierce rivals competing to be the best, destroying everyone that dare try to defeat us. She was the queen of table tennis and I was the king of tennis as the strategy of flailing the wii remote worked wonders for me.

 It all started when I was 7 and I was facing off against her in baseball, and from that moment on I knew that things would never be the same. As I went to bat in the top of the first inning I saw the face of a true champion, with the gleaming red lipstick and glasses that struck fear into every opponent's heart as they would go to bat. My mii came up to bat naive and unknowing of Helen’s true power. 

I’m not going to lie, I lost to Helen that day, but I had a burning passion in my heart, something that would stay to me this day, the rivalry had begun. Every time I would play against someone else in Wii Sports, I would play them with a ferocity that would not be there without Helen. I elevated my game. I played for hours. I would refuse to ever lose to that devil again. So I grinded out the baseball mode to become a pro rank, I would learn the turbo speed serve in tennis, I would destroy countless out of the park homers in baseball, I would even throw my bowling balls in the other lanes just to prepare to mess Helen up, it was an obsession, a passion. 

When I was older, I came back into Wii Sports resort as I craved the nostalgia,  and I was motivated to be a beast at that game as well, remembering the times of old where I would grind the original game for hours on end. I loaded up in the main menu for the game and there was a basketball game and it looked like it could make for a good  time. I got the hang of it quickly, and I had a ton of fun playing the single player mode, playing against my brother, and I even convinced my dad to play against us sometimes. 

 I came in like any old Saturday morning with my frosted flakes in my belly and ready to beeee greatttt. Then, I loaded up Wii Sports Resort Basketball,  and saw Helen’s terrorizing face come up on the screen. I had a flashback to the game where I saw her destroy me. I couldn’t have that happen again, all of the work I put in, I couldn’t lose. I had to succeed.

The game started out amazing and I hit a 3 in the corner, and was getting my swagger going, but my naive self thought it was going to be that easy but Helen is a warrior and doesn’t go down easy. She got the ball on the next possession and got a shot off over me, while I was hoping that yelling at the screen would change my fortune. It went back and forth with a lot of shots made and both teams struggling on defense, but Helen was amazing, dare I say it a god, but I was winning by 1 point with 12 seconds left. 

“Helen I swear to god, I’m going to slit your throat if you shoot one more three over me… Helen!!!” 

1.8 seconds were left and I had to make a 3 pointer to win it all, this was the highest stakes I was ever playing for. The pressure on my shoulders was insurmountable. The ball is passed to the right... gets the ball in 3 point range... the ball’s up… IT’S GOOD!!! I can’t believe it! I beat the champion, my fiercest rival, I guess you could even say the apprentice beat the master. Helen was why I worked as hard as I did, and I was a changed man. I was a winner, a champion, I knew that I was capable of doing anything I wanted to do through hard work because of her, and not just through Wii Sports and my clash against Helen, but through everything I wanted in life whether that was through going to nationals for Euro Challenge all the way through becoming a varsity tennis player in my Freshman year without ever playing organized tennis before that because of that obsession, that passion, the need to conquer. When I was young I didn’t see the point of working hard if you weren’t going to get some immediate reward back, and I stumbled upon a lesson that would drive my life forward and force myself forward through grit to achieve my goals and put myself into a position where I can succeed. Yes college is going to be hard, there is no doubt in my mind that I can conquer it well because I will go that extra mile, whatever it takes to succeed in college and in life whatever that might be, when I look at Helen’s face I don’t see a champion, but I see someone who got the best out of me and that showed how rewarding putting in the work means, and for that Helen, I commend you.