One free throw. For one trophy.
That’s the lifelong dream of more than 1,600 young men and women who’ll begin play today (the guys, anyway) in the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. At some point in their lives it’s probably been the dream of every kid who’s ever launched so much as a single shot toward a rusty rim.
And on Monday night, March 10, inside the Signal Mountain Town Hall Gym, it was the dream of 12-year-old Vanessa Steen as she stood at the foul line with less than 20 seconds left in a tie game.
Within the very narrow world of Signal Mountain Youth Basketball, nothing less than the championship of the 4th and 5th grade division was at stake for Vanessa and the rest of her undefeated, pretty-in-pink, Fighting Flamingo teammates. Well, a championship and those all-important trophies for the winners to eventually place on their bedroom dressers, presumably right next to their One Direction poster. So Vanessa was understandably, in her words, “Very, very nervous.”
Then again, what’s one free throw when you once spent three and a half days buried beneath the rubble of your Port-au-Prince, Haiti, elementary school after the 2010 earthquake?