After school, Kent brings Carrie to his office once again, while he makes a call to URI’s interim head coach. Just as the contact period is about to end.

“Hello, I’m Venomous Agendas’ girls’ basketball coach, I’m calling about my player, Carrie Mailman…”

“Carrie?” URI’s interim basketball head coach, surprised upon hearing about Carrie, asks Kent. “I expected this call to be about Heather! What position does she play?”

“Point guard; she used to play small forward in the past. As for Heather, unfortunately, she feels like her teammates as a Ram will smother her under academic pressure! And yet, Carrie was a key contributor to Heather’s successes, and, by extension, the whole team’s!”

Carrie never acted entitled. She accepted that sometimes, she had to step out of her role, or to ask for help so that she can keep contributing. However, she was content with not being the best in class, Kent reflects on Carrie’s character as a player, while Carrie is doing some practice questions.

“Get me Carrie, please…”

“Very well” Kent sighs, while handing the phone over to Carrie.

“Your coach sent us tapes of Heather in the past, and now tapes of key games at the state tournament. We love your game, especially with passing and dribbling, however, because you know about the Rhode Island Bloodbath, there is a word of caution”

“What do you mean?” Carrie asks, rolling her eyes. “The Rhode Island Bloodbath?”

“My predecessor was fired today because too many players were failing. All players affected were on probation at the time, and their unsatisfactory progress caused them to be expelled from URI. However, going forward, we need to be stricter on academics to prevent that from occurring again! I understand that the Rams are in a bind right now, but this recruiting class will be the last for which any academic favors will be extended! Count yourself lucky!”

URI isn’t exactly a big name in college basketball, D1 though it might be. The top juco talent tend to have landed in juco because they had poor grades, or are injury-prone, and gets signed months before their graduation. The same holds of top D2-3 talent in the portal, as well as high school recruits. This is why I don’t expect much out of the transfer portal, the coach ruminates as the options are explored. Either way, I inherited a less-than-ideal situation. We must prepare to attend as many NCAA-certified unsigned senior showcases as possible! Ideally 3.5 GPA or higher, with multiple APs preferred, if high school, or 3.0 and higher, if transfer portal.

“Your academic record is a little iffy. You did improve late in junior year and into senior year, though. Is there a reason why you didn’t take any AP courses?” a frustrated coach vents.

“I didn’t want to overload myself the way my teammates did! Also, it’s kind of expected that, to take APs, you need to get As in the prereqs!” Carrie vehemently argues.

“You do realize that most of your future teammates took APs, sometimes multiple at once, and had better high school grades than you?” the coach asks Carrie, questioning her about an aspect of playing on the Rams.

Kent, and now the people over in Rhode Island, too? Why is it that, because collegiate play has suddenly become an option, everyone started telling me about how my teammates in college will be stronger students than I am myself? Carrie starts shaking and dreading the essay. Damn… too many question marks about my teammates, and hence about the playing time I’ll get! And how I’ll fit in games once I’m playing as a Ram!

“You said it so yourself that URI bled players because of poor academic performance! You can’t make assumptions about the academic performance of the recruiting class until you actually have one!”

“Anyway, apply to URI for Spring by June fifteenth, and we’ll see whether we can get you here in Fall. I would love you to take an official visit to Rhode Island, just tell us which weekend works best for you”

After answering some practice questions, she returns home to tell her parents about what transpired at school.

“Now I might be able to play basketball in college after all!” an ecstatic Carrie tells her parents.

“Where will you play?” Carrie’s dad asks her.

“Rhode Island! They loved my game during the state tournament, and they would love to have me on the team!”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“You’re the best unsigned point guard left in the state, and it was just a question of time until you get an offer!”

“It better be a full ride!” Carrie’s mom adds, worried about finances.

“I hope so, too! You played like that Latvian, or is that Lithuanian, I don’t remember”

“Yes. However, to make sure it’s actually going to be a full ride, I need to study for the ACT over the next two weeks! And do my homework, too!”

“What do you mean, the next two weeks? Are you retaking the ACT?” Carrie’s mom asks her daughter.

“Yes, and the booster club is paying for it. Double the regular fee because standby testing, and it’s next Saturday at VA! And one last thing: Rhode Island is taking me on an all-expenses-paid visit, but they can only pay for me to go without you”

“Just tell me when!”

Dad always acted as if countries had distinctive playing styles on the court! To think the whole team’s playstyle was also compared to Lithuania’s specifically! And the first time I ever heard about Latvia was in a basketball game! Dad’s implying that Latvia is a solid basketball country… Carrie’s thoughts get consumed by her dad’s comparisons as she sets out to do her homework and get more practice questions in.

Before going to sleep, she answers her coach’s query about when she can go on an official visit.

However, this all seems so sudden to her, and she has trouble sleeping. Especially since she feels like an appointment with guidance counseling is in order. What did I do, or fail to do, to slip under the recruiters’ radars last summer? As much as I’d love to say that recruiting might have a luck factor, and I was unlucky…

Fortunately for Carrie, the meeting with Steven comes relatively quickly, and she meets with him at lunch time. Once she sits down in his office:

“Why ask this late for help on college applications?” Steven asks her.

“Yesterday, I received a call from Rhode Island, they offered me a scholarship, but I must apply there to play. For Spring, but I must get my application in by a certain date so that I can play the whole season!”

“I guess, I’m happy for you, but what do you need help with?”

“The essay”

Steven then pulls out a list of seven essay prompts from the Common Application, which URI takes. Carrie then reviews each of these prompts, wondering which one would be most likely to represent her.

“First, avoid talking about things that are already elsewhere in the application. And same for me, too, when the time comes to write the letter of recommendation. I’m sure Kent is writing one for you, after all, he’s the one who knows you best, but he must ensure that he doesn’t sound like a hoops scouting report!”

Carrie struggles to think of anything she can write about. Until she has a flash about another painful episode of her academic life… But of course! I can always write about how a practice problem in Algebra II made me realize the importance of weighing the risks, and I’m grateful for the team’s brainiac for that! More like the “primary” brainiac, since Cora has grown to become the “alternate” brainiac as her quiz bowl prowess increased!

She starts jotting down an outline of her essay on her cell phone, which she doesn’t feel like coming back to it until the ACT is finished. And, of course, she is given a PDF on that topic that kids in AP English get, so it would help her in writing the essay two weeks down the road.

However, Carrie even stops going to the weight room until the retake ends, and, as such, spends hours upon hours studying for the ACT. I won’t let a stupid ACT retake stand in the way of my basketball dreams! she ruminates, while poring over study guides for various sections of the ACT, which she treats much more seriously.

So after the ACT is over with, and on which she feels she has improved markedly by virtue of having learned more material since the state-sponsored date, she resumes writing her essay, but after the first draft is done on Saturday night after the test, she sends it to her teammate she talks about in the essay itself:

“Carrie!” Audrey screams in her bedroom, in the middle of a quiz bowl drill. “Why did you keep quiet about Rhode Island? Heather mentioned it last week, and now you?”

Audrey starts reading the essay, realizing that her teammate started taking a more measured approach to risk-taking because of that practice problem on the Lotto 6/49 last year. She then tells her ex-teammate a few areas of improvement for the essay by texting.

Upon receipt of Audrey’s feedback, Carrie then edits the essay based on that. Which, after AI-powered proofreading, she decides to send not to Audrey again, but to Steven. And leaves aside until Monday.

Speaking of Monday morning, before Carrie gets to school, she receives an envelope from URI in the mail. As she opens it, she finds a hand-written note from the URI coach, on official URI letterhead and the coach’s signature: We love your game, fingers crossed that your ACT retake, combined with your later grades, will be strong enough to convince us that you’re not at risk of failing out of the program.

If URI goes to the trouble of sending me that sort of hand-written note, hopefully URI is for real, and that I can actually play in college! However, I hope that this retake has been worthwhile, and the only thing left standing in the way is the ACT; I really don’t want to retake the ACT again, Carrie starts having a bad feeling about the implications of her ACT score, and she wonders 1) how much she got and 2) how high of an ACT score she feels URI needs to be fully convinced that she won’t pose a risk to the program.

“I feel like I threw the booster club’s money down the drain, and URI might rescind the offer if I don’t score high enough on this retake last Saturday! They made me feel like a twenty-three won’t cut it!” Carrie starts crying.

“Honey, I’d say, just stay strong. I understand you’re not in your normal condition right now, and I understand that you don’t want to throw away four years of hard work on the court because of one bad test!” Carrie’s mom tries to comfort her.

“I really hope things will turn out well…” Carrie’s dad adds.