Sacrifice

Chapter 1

In the town of Brampton, Ontario they love their hockey team the Brampton Admirals. It is home to one of the top players in eastern Canada, Ryan Matthews. He's always had pressure on him growing up an elite hockey player whether its from his parents, coaches, agent, or most importantly himself. Ryan has dealt with pressure his whole life doing a tremendous job of dealing with all the attention. But this was his last year of junior hockey and High School. The Brampton Admirals weren't in any position to be a contender this year. The dynasty years of the 90's and early 2000's were long gone and they hadn't had that same success for over 10 years. When Ryan was brought in he was expected to single handedly turn this organization around. Although he did break almost every rookie record there was, there's only so much that a single player can do. Brampton ended up missing the playoffs for the 5th straight year and this years team was looking even worse. Ryan was a kind, well mannered kid growing up chasing his dream of playing in the NHL. He has everything in life going for him and has always lived life with success in everything he does. He has more than enough girls to pick and choose from whenever he pleases. He is surrounded by a great group of friends he has grown up with through school, and an amazing supportive family.

The only thing holding Ryan back is his grades. He struggles academically and has gotten away with it up until this year. As a grade 12 trying to earn a scholarship at an elite NCAA school his grades will contribute to which schools are interested in him. Ryan has hockey everyday from 2-8pm six days a week, which doesn't allow much time to fit homework, studying, or social activities. Everyone knows he has the skill to make it to the next level but colleges are always trying to take kids with high GPA.

It's September 6 and Ryan wakes up for his first day of grade 12. "Hey Ryan get up, were leaving in 30!" Ryan wakes up to the sound of his mom yelling at him. After his morning routine of crawling out of bed, throwing on some clothes, and grab some food, he loads his hockey gear in his car and is off to start his grad year.

He gets to school and finds his group of 5 other guys he's been close with since elementary school. Josh, Jason, Mike, Kyle, Trevor, and Ryan all greet each other at the same spot everyday before school. "What's up buddy? You look dead," Kyle said to Ryan.

"Yeah coach had us on the late night practice last night and I probably slept a total of 20 minutes," Ryan explained with eyes half open.

"Your coach is a psycho Ryan that's not even healthy to be practicing as often you do," Jason adds. To Ryan it seemed completely normal to be up late playing hockey, but no one else seemed to understand it. It's time to go to class and Ryan's first block is pre-calculus 12. To some people that might sound easy or maybe "standard" but for a guy that barely passed Math 11 it's an intimidating name but he knows he needs this course for better post-secondary schools to look at him for a possible scholarship. Luckily he has a good friend of his named Kyle, who sits next to in the back corner. The unfortunate part is that Ryan might even be smarter than Kyle, which isn't easy to do.

"Dude this is going to be such a funny class with us together." Kyle says to Ryan with a big smile on his face. "Yeah..." Ryan says with an uneasy laugh. Class begins with a review of what was learned last year. Ryan takes one look at the first question and immediately sighs. He knew this was going to be a tough year. After math Ryan walked into his history class. Sitting alone and a girl he knew but couldn't remember her name walked up to him. "Is this seat taken?" He looked up to see a pretty face smiling at him. "No, no sorry." He quickly says as he moves his books off the desk making room for her. "Sorry what's your name?" Ryan asks feeling embarrassed that he couldn't remember. "Alyssa, we've had classes together before and talked at parties before... Thanks for remembering." She says, creating a very awkward situation. They sit there next to each other in silence as class begins. Ryan figured he would find success in this class because he is good at purely memorizing facts for tests. It was an easy class with multiple fun games to get to know each other in the class. It definitely helped ease the tension between Ryan and Alyssa. Now it was time for Biology which Ryan actually found interesting. As he showed up to class he realized he didn't know anyone and sat with some kids who he was pretty sure didn't speak English. The first day of classes was an easy day but now it was time to go home, eat, and drive to hockey.