Typical Day
Now basketball is my favorite sport
I like the way they dribble up and down the court
I keep it so fresh on the microphone
I like no interruption when the game is on…
Courtney Towers' arm swings over to her bedside table. She grumbles and reflects on the moment when she set her morning alarm to Lil' Bow Wow's chart-topping hit from her childhood.
It was so much funnier at the time.
Courtney dozes back to sleep as she begins to wonder how "microphone" and "game is on" can possibly rhyme…
Bow Wow, keeping it fresh on the microphone.
Suddenly, she hears something land on her pillow, a few inches to the left of her head. Her eyes shoot open to discover her roommate and fellow teammate, Sarah Passington, looming over her. On her face is an expectant, almost challenging smile. Courtney looks to her left and sees a Clif bar.
Courtney grumbles some more, mainly to make a point, before slumping out of bed. Sarah throws Courtney her basketball shorts and places Courtney's sneakers out in front of her. Sarah is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Courtney, on the other hand, is crusty-eyed and totally out of it. No time to brush that hair, so ponytail it is.
Courtney and Sarah frantically throw on their practice gear. Courtney grabs a couple more protein bars from her kitchen counter and they bolt out the door. She steals a peek at her phone. It's 5:50AM. As they jet across campus, Courtney yanks on her hood and rubs her hands together. "It's freezing out here," she thinks to herself.
On the way to the gym, the sun slowly rises, yet the campus remains quiet and still. As she steps into the gym, the echo of basketballs and the squeaking of sneakers bounce off the walls. Courtney and Sarah do some static arm and legs stretches before practicing shooting. She stretches her quadriceps, hamstrings, and chest.
The last time Courtney skipped stretching, her muscles couldn't take the sudden stress. She had muscle tension for days.
Coach Buckets runs the team through a series of passing and shooting drills before sending them off to the weight room. At 7:15AM, Maggie pops into the athletic trainer's office and gets her knee wrapped with ice. Despite being in excellent shape, her knee's been acting up.
After working out, Courtney is joined by Sarah at the dining hall for breakfast. They live together, eat together, and they even have the same class schedule. It's almost like they're the same person…
Plot twist: We discover that no one else can see Sarah. Sarah Passington is a figment of Courtney's imagination—maybe even her alter ego, or a ghost, or both.
Courtney's world starts to spin. She doesn't have time for a mental breakdown. She's a student-athlete, for crying out loud. She's unraveling.
What's real?
What's not?
"My life is suddenly a cliché psychological thriller," she wails, "and right before a big game?!"
Soon, she remembers that hallucinations are an obvious sign of sleep deprivation and malnutrition, so she hurriedly wolfs down some fruit and scrambled egg whites. She wishes she could somehow strengthen her core with Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
After breakfast, Courtney runs to class. Dazed students stumble out of their dorms wearing pajama pants. Courtney's been up for over two hours. Those plebs.
Wednesday is Courtney's long day; she has three classes, back-to-back-to-back. If she's lucky, she'll have time to grab a to-go plate from the dining hall for lunch. Turkey on wheat, all day, everyday.
After that third class, it's straight to study hall. Courtney plops down onto one of the oversized chairs in the team's study area. Her head bobs down to her chest and she's soon fast asleep.
Suddenly, Courtney jerks her head up at the sound of an exasperated organic chemistry student sighing and crying silently to himself. He is dead inside. Courtney wipes the drool from her chin and attempts to concentrate. "I know that feeling," she thinks to herself.
Courtney's beat, all the time. She's fallen behind in her psychology class and the professor has notified Coach Buckets. Courtney's amazed at how difficult it's been to balance her studies with the responsibilities and commitment that come with playing college basketball.
Before she knows it, 5:00PM rolls around. Courtney throws her books haphazardly into her backpack and scrambles to make it back to the gym in time for the second practice of the day. She takes a protein bar out from her backpack as she walks through campus—anything to give her a little energy for the evening practice.
Tonight's practice is long. Courtney's team has a game in two nights, so they run through all of their offensive plays, review the offensive and defensive tendencies of the team they'll be playing, then end with some brutal sprints and skill practice. Courtney's knee starts bugging her halfway through, but she grinds it out. Future Courtney (Sarah?) is cursing her. Present Courtney knows that the trainer's office is just around the corner.
It's 7:30PM. The dining hall is about to close. With her knee wrapped in ice, Courtney hobbles as quickly as possible across campus. There aren't many healthy options in the dining hall, so she improvises. The usual mixture of veggies and chicken breast does the trick.
Stomach full, Courtney heads back to her apartment where her real roommate, Maggie, awaits. She's a softballer, so she also knows that student-athlete life. Courtney decides that there will be no more sports talk for the rest of the night.
Instead, she and her roommate talk about a guy that Maggie met at a party last weekend. Both Courtney and Maggie wish they had time for relationships. Between basketball and class, there was barely enough time to eat and sneak in the occasional episode of The Big Bang Theory. Boys? Who has time for that?
Anyway, Courtney's in love with a beautiful, orange, mild-mannered sphere named Spalding, and she's very committed.
Stretched out in her bedroom, Courtney zones out in front of her tablet. She has a Western Civ midterm tomorrow afternoon and needs to cram. Courtney takes a break from her flashcards and heating pad to check the time. It's now 11:00PM and she can barely keep her eyes open.
She puts her cards down and turns off the light—forgetting to set her alarm, of course. She nods off, dreaming of making the Final Four. Every night, she has the same dream: climbing the ladder beneath the hoop and cutting down the net. She'll get there…once she gets past this midterm.