Competitive drive put into a greater perspective

I have played sports for as long as I can remember. I’ve been sore, I’ve been beaten and I’ve felt the pain of defeat and the bliss of victory. But above all of this, I am a competition junkie.
  I’m not ashamed to admit it. The thrill of a good wholesome challenge is like a drug to me. The rush of exhilaration that I get when I step on the field or the court just before the start of a game gives me a high that I can’t find anywhere else.
  But in the last month, my sense of competition has been put into perspective.
  I play just to play, because the competition makes me feel alive. But if I ever wanted to stop playing the game and just walk away, I could. I quit.
  Those two magic words would free me from any obligation the sporting world has ever held for me. But recently I met a little girl who can do anything but quit.
  Her name is Annina and the game that she plays is the game of life.�
  In March 2009, Annina began feeling pain in her knee while walking around Disneyland. Little did she know that what she thought was just some wear and tear from a long a day of walking would lead to a life-altering circumstance.
  After countless X-rays and tests, the fateful news was announced to Annina and her family. Annina was diagnosed with cancer.
  More specifically the doctors had found osteosarcoma in her right leg, a bone disease that is only found in about five percent of all pediatric cancers.
  This diagnosis lead to 8 months of chemo therapy treatments and 95 overnight hospital stays for either her treatments or fevers. Despite this, in the face of all her circumstances, while in the midst of a battle that she very well could have lost, Annina kept fighting.
   She fought through cancer, and dealt with a pain that few could even imagine, and yet refused to let it beat her down.
  In the face of her competition, she became the motivation for another type of competition, even though I sometimes think she doesn’t realize how big of an impact she has on the Granite Bay High School girl’s lacrosse team, a team that I am a member of.
  We play for Annina. Every game we play we walk on the field with a number seven on our arms, the number of the jersey that we gave to her when we went to visit her in the hospital at one point early this season. And on our biggest game of the year, she was there to cheer us on.
  She sat on our bench and was a member of a team in a sport she will probably never be able to play. Her competition for her life has provided our team with the drive to prove that we will not back down from any challenge we face. And that day we played for something more than the competition, more than just winning. We played for Annina.
  Annina completed her last chemo treatment on March 4, 2010, and it is the first step in her recovery. She never quit. She never backed down. She is a true competitor.