A Saint for Life Read Online Free

stretched with the team. Looking to my left, I continued to watch the seats in the arena fill up, and then I noticed her. The girl I saw in front of the arena—it was her.
    I couldn’t stop staring. What was she doing here? She worked for the athletic department? How haven’t I noticed her before?
    I continued to watch her make her way around the court until she found a seat right next to my coach. She said hello with a gentle smile to people who passed by. Her innocent face and radiant beauty hypnotized me. How was I supposed to play my best with her sitting right there?
    I tried to turn my mind off. I tried my best to avoid looking at her, but my eyes continued to drift in that direction. We began to line up for the U.S. National Anthem, and that’s when it happened. Our eyes locked, and everyone else in the arena disappeared. It was just the two of us in an empty arena. I was too mesmerized to look away. After she bent her head down for a few moments, I watched her slowly look back up. I smiled as our eyes met again hoping to get one in return.
    Nothing.
    Running back out onto the court after halftime, I looked up at the scoreboard and over to my coach. I played horribly during the first half. He actually asked me in the locker room if I knew how to play basketball. I was too distracted from glancing over at her, the way she looked intensely at what she was doing behind the computer and how she brushed her hair off to the right side of her face. I couldn't stop admiring everything about her. She, however, appeared to be trying her best to avoid looking at me.
    The clock ran down again. I had one last chance to make this right. I couldn't miss any more rebounds or have the ball stolen from me. I needed to wake up. I needed to stop watching her and start playing a game she couldn't help but watch. So I did. I started making shot after shot and had no fouls. I was on fire. The Monmouth players couldn't keep up. Heck, my team couldn't even keep up with me.
    At the buzzer, the adrenaline continued to rush through my body. I ran to my other teammates and pumped my fists in the air toward the crowd. Another win. Just as I was about to head into the locker room, a reporter came over to interview me.
    “Wow, what a change of pace for you from the first half to the second! Can you elaborate to us on what happened?”
    Taking a deep breath and wiping the sweat from my forehead, I looked over toward the girl and back at the reporter. Hands on my hips, I quickly had to think of a response.
    “Well, we all have these days. My head just wasn’t in the game during the first half. New semester, new classes, you know how that goes. But I owe a lot of my success to—” I tried to grab someone to help me escape from the interview, but the reporter continued, and no one was left. There was no way to get out of this now.
    “Congratulations, by the way, on scoring your career high of fifty-three points! How do you do it? How do you make such a big mental switch?”
    “You know, I’m going to tell you the same thing I told my kids at camp this summer. You have to want to win, and that has to be the only thing you want. If you for a second place your mind on something other than the game or playing your best, you’ll lose it. Your time on the court is to be the best, play the best, work as a team, and bring that team to a win. You have the rest of the day to think about other things.”
    “Thanks for talking with us, Christian, and congratulations again!” The reporter closed when he noticed that my coach was waving me down to bring me into the locker room. Why couldn’t he have waved me down sooner?
    Once the last person entered the locker room, Coach Higgins started off with the same sentence after a win,
    “Good job, guys. Another W is in the books. However…”
    He continued to rip us apart for the mistakes we made, mostly my mistakes. He only mentioned once that I hit my career high. He was more focused on putting attention