"The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender."

-- Vince Lombardi

Surrender; we could have many times tonight.
We shot like half-blind 80 year-old grannies (with the exception of Janeen).
No flow, no rhythm, no intensity and yet no fear.
2.9 glowed on the game clock, and still resolve flowed through my veins.
Katya hit the shot at the buzzer.

We won.

One emergency room visit and three stitches later, and I still can’t believe we found a way. Coach says the basketball Gods smiled upon us tonight, I don’t know what happened but I was glad to be wearing white when that buzzer sounded.

Janeen was BIG tonight, and if you’ve ever seen her, you know I’m not talking about her size. She carried our scoring load through the game. They tried tackling her but that only resulted in a visit to the trainer and a band-aid. But later we had to take her to the ER and they stitched three little amigos across her chin. She’s as good as new, no worries. Well, I’ll be honest, I do have one worry. I have escorted both of my roommates to the ER in the past week for stitches. I took Mandy on Friday night after her closet mirror fell and left a gash in her calve. What does that say about me?

Pardon the aside, my point is, we survived. It’s tournament time and there is no room for error. Even if we had to play Girl Scouts, there would be no room for "fat heads." Only the strong survive, and we came out on top once more.

The road is long, and it’s not paved with yellow bricks. We learned a lesson in humility tonight, but we also learned that "it ain’t over ‘til it’s over."