She tied her shoelace and looked up, her long muscled butt on the bench, her long stringy blond hair in a pony tail bunched out in the crook of her neck. Pale face, red cheeks, blue eyes. She’ll never make the pros. Why should she want to anyway? The pros don’t make that much and they tire themselves out and wear out their young bones pounding up and down the court.

She’ll never make the pros. She’s always risen early to shoot a few hoops. When she was just a kid, out back on the nice smooth white driveway, shooting freethrows (WNBA marked) in the dusty morning light. And then when she was on the highschool team, early to the gym where she and a few others of both sexes–mostly the other sex–had, with the help of an energetic coaching staff, secured the right to shoot hoops from 6:30AM to 7:30AM. And now every morning at one of the gyms on campus, twisting the rubbery toe of her white hightops into the yellow plastic flooring, reveling in the squeak, setting back on her haunches, ball overhead like a dancing bear she readies herself for the shot.

Maybe she’ll make the pros. But I doubt it. She’s never had the quickness.

The seats are small. Those wrap-around desks of metal tubing and composite plastic colored yellow. Not a super bright yellow, but not a soft yellow. A banana yellow, an industrial yellow. Her long legs in blue jeans (feet in flip flops–like so many in her sorority when the weather permits) sprawl out like a giraffe standing up. In a sorority sweatshirt she–long forearms triangling on the tabletop and long fingers dangling over the edge–leans over talking to a crew-cut young man in a similarly casual and Greek outfit.

She’ll probably be a chemist. Or a doctor. She likes sciences and is very industrious. She doesn’t even want to go pro all that much anymore.