Recognize [c.a]

chapter | 18

Guess it's true, ex's change

5 years later, October 27th
Chicago, Illinois

"Chels I need my trainer to come in early for my stretches. Okay?" Chelsea is my manager. I met her at a bar on day. She said she really needed a job, and I needed a manager, so bam. I needed her to call my trainer before my game, here in Chicago to against the Chicago Sky's. I play for the New York Liberty ,which of course is one of the best women's basketball teams. Our record is 23-11 which isn't to bad. I wanted to kick ass tonight so I needed to be as prepared as I can possibly be.

My trainer appeared to my hotel room in less then 15 minutes to stretch my knee. It was injured during my junior year at college. It was something very serious. I popped my knee cap out of place. I had to get surgery on it because of how bad it was. I lost almost half of my basketball season over the injury. I've been taking good care of my precious knee as you can obviously tell.

Everything during senior year was a blur. I seriously couldn't remember, but if someone told me about it I probably would. My freshman year of college Shawn had contacted me on some beyond friends stuff, and I was just so overwhelmed. It was so hard balancing the school work and basketball then because I made it hard on myself. I softly rejected him, but told him to ask me sometime the next year and he did. So on November 17th Chres— wtf no. Shawn and I will be 3 years. I'll just leave it on that note.

-

It was half-time and we were in the locker discussing plays we could run against them. They had really good defense which resulted in us having a tie. Our team as a whole continued to turn over the ball which was definitely embarrassing did I mention this was on national tv, luckily we were able to keep up with them. "This is ridiculous, what the hell are y'all doing out there?" I just shook my head in embarrassment. Coach looked at us all in pure disbelief because no one had a response. This incident immediately reminded me of the 6th grade year. When none of the girls were good. Only a slight few, and it drug the team down. Coach soon walked out after saying, "Y'all better pull it together before the end of half time.

I looked at the clock to see how much time we had left. Quite frankly I didn't know what time it was before we left he gym. Luckily the my had a built in time keeper in the locker room. I gawked at it because I had never seen one before and it was so neat. I'm defenetly talking to them about getting one soon. Anyways we had 15 minutes left to talk. "Hey guys I know we're better then this and we need to step our game up. Alright?" Most nodded others were still ignoring. "Don't keep your head down, have some confidence. We don't need selfish cowards on this team. We were put together to bond and accept each other. Alright?" About 3 of the heads that were down shot up and nodded agreeing with my statement. "Now let's go kick some Chicago ass." At this point everyone was hype.

We finished our talk within 5 minutes, leaving us 10 minutes to warm up. We went on to the court confident as ever. Our energy level was sky high, and that's always good.

The other team came out with 3 minutes on the clock. They started warming up. They looked so focused and determined. The complete opposite of us. "Hey guys, lets focused for this last 2 minutes. We can't afford to lose." Soon as I said that everyone's ambience became serious.

-

The game went into double over time, but we lost by one point. Free throws were our main problem. Our coach said she was proud of how hard we worked, and it was alright. I knew it wasn't. Everyone did. Our coach can say this and we'll still be doing a couple laps around the gym.

After getting dressed, and about to departure. Trying to get to the team bus. I was grabbed by a unknown person. My first reaction was to swing at the face, but I guess they knew me to well. It quickly grabbed my hand that was going towards it's face. "Ahh. A little feisty. I always liked that about you." I tried to decipher the voice, but I couldn't.