ADRENALINE
KOLE FEENEY, 11
AS I sat on the bench, I looked around to acknowledge the sea of white surrounding the
court. There wasn’t any peril, but it sure felt like it. I glanced over at the blinding scoreboard whose lights showed 5 seconds. My eyes then wandered to Coach who brought his hands up to his chest to form a “T”. I locked eyes with him and my palms grew damp as a swamp. He slowly looked away and called the team towards himself for a huddle. I ran to the huddle and shoved Mark to obtain a spot in the dense circle. We all looked at each other with equal solemnity. The immense sound coming from the fans made it impossible to hear any talking. Coach tried his best to communicate with us, but my teammates and I looked at him signaling we could not hear his deep scratchy voice. He nodded and raised his hands to point at us. He first pointed at Mark, then Jimmy, Malik was next, next his finger looked at John, and then to everyone’s surprise, me. We ran onto the mahogany polished wood court. I glanced to my left and saw my loving mother clenching her fists in excitement. I told myself I would play these last seconds for her, but then the pulchritude of this girl a couple sections to her left stole my attention. This wasn’t just any girl, this was Jane Welch, the nicest, prettiest, and funnest girl in the whole school. As I started to turn back around, I saw her wave from the corner of my eye and a slight smirk appeared on my face. The referee signaled for my team to take the ball. Mark went to throw in the ball and yelled out, “Purple.” Purple was my favorite inbounds play. I had run this play over 100 times in my head. The referee emphatically blew his whistle. The numbers 33 came running at me as Malik was setting a pick on my defender. I dodged around the pick and held my hands up impatiently waiting for the ball to arrive. The brown sphere hit my hands and I suddenly knew exactly what to do. The ground rumbled as I dribbled the ball closer to the three point line and then stepped back. Soon enough the defender was on the ground holding his left ankle. I stood before the three point line pondering about the shot. It had to be taken, ‘twas just a matter of the ball going in the basket. I thought about my mom holding her fists tight awaiting the shot. I thought about Jane and how this shot could impress her. And lastly I thought about my team, so much effort and sacrifice had been contributed to the team. I was not going to miss this shot, too much was at stake. All of my built up stress was instantly attenuated. My blistered and sweaty hands started to move up from my waist. My feet left the ground right as the ball reached my forehead. I adjusted my hands and shot the ball. It traveled in slow motion as if I was in a movie. The ball looked on track to go in. I clenched my whole body along with everyone else in the building. It was silent besides the slight buzz of the air conditioning. The ball hit the back rim, bounced up, came down and sat on the rim for what seemed like an eternity. No one could tell if the ball was heading in or falling off. The basketball made a slight move towards the backboard right as the buzzer had sounded. I had made the shot. The stadium erupted as I heard every sound known to man. Every single person was yelling and clapping, confetti cannons were exploding as if they were fireworks, and the band started to play our famous win song. My teammates jumped atop of me causing me to fall onto the hard wooden floor. They were all screaming my name in celebration with smiles on their faces. I escaped the malodorous smelling dogpile and ran to stand up. With
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