Thank you keiman and kei and daisygirl101 for beta reading and helping me improve!

I do not own Chicken Little. Chicken Little is owned by Disney. I only lay claim to Chauncey Cheetah, Chester Cheetah, Chelsie Cheetah, and Chip Cheetah.

Chapter 10

Basketball tryouts came faster than Chauncey thought they would. He knew it was his chance to prove himself, help the team win, and get better along the way. Chicken Little and his friends had wished him luck after school, and the cheetah immediately went to the boys' locker room to change into gym clothes. After he was dressed, he headed to the gymnasium to practice and warm up.

Once he had finished practicing, he went home and had a hearty dinner, then returned to school as tryouts were to begin.

Surprisingly, he was there a whole hour before the coach finally showed up. Doug Donkey also showed up, and smiled once he saw the young cheetah.

"Welcome to tryouts Chauncey. Are you ready to rock?" Doug Donkey greeted.

"Ready as I'll ever be," Chauncey smiled.

An hour later, tryouts began. About seventy other boys showed up for trying out for the team.

The boys all huddled around, whispering to each other before the coach cleared his throat.

"Good evening boys. Welcome to basketball tryouts. Tonight, for the next four days, we are here to find out who will make our boys' basketball team this year. Unfortunately, we need a new leader for the team as Brett Bear is still recovering from his ACL injury he suffered last season. We will find out who will be worthy of a leader after the fourth day of tryouts. Along with a leader, there will be fourteen other players under his leadership. Now, any questions or concerns?" the coach elaborated.

No one raised their hand.

"Good, now let's get started with slides," the coach said.

Everyone made ten rows of seven boys each as they got ready to do slides.

"Before we begin, I must tell you the keys to slides. Every time, for at least thirty seconds, you must play good defense to keep the other team from scoring easy layups. The key is keeping your guy in front of you. Should you be off-balance, that guy can drive and get an easy bucket, which is why you must be balanced the entire time. Now, are we ready? When I blow the whistle, we will do slides for one minute and then exaggeration for three minutes. We will do slides five times," the coach explained.

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The boys got ready, and soon the coach blew the whistle. As the boys began doing slides, Doug Donkey kept an eye on Chauncey. As he was a cheetah, the donkey wasn't surprised Chauncey was doing slides significantly faster than everyone else. Not only were his strides wider than everyone else, but his reactions were so quick that he did at least four slides every second.

Next the boys did shooting. After a while, everyone, even the coaches, could only stare in awe at the shooting display Chauncey was putting up. The cheetah was even shooting full court shots, and they still went in with ease. Even if anyone put pressure on him, the cheetah simply tuned them out, stayed locked in, and sank every shot he took.

The cheetah impressed the coaches with everything. Defense, rebounding, running, dribbling, handling, and everything else seemed much too easy for the cheetah. Chauncey was even dribbling a dozen basketballs at once. No matter what the other boys tried to do, they just could not get any of the balls out of the tall cheetah's grasp.

The first day of tryouts concluded, and soon all the boys headed home. Except Chauncey. He stayed a little later than everyone else and kept his practicing going.

Doug Donkey walked up to the cheetah just as he completed a spinning reverse dunk.

"Whoa! Nice dunk!" He exclaimed.

"Thanks, Mr. Donkey," Chauncey smiled as he grabbed the ball, let himself fall from the rim and landed on his feet.

"Of course. You really impressed everyone today. Not once did you mess anything up, miss a shot, or even lose one ball to anyone when you were dribbling twelve balls at once. I think you and I should do private tryouts, where I train you, and everyone else just stays here and trains with the other coach," Doug said.

"Okay? How are we going to do that?" the cheetah wondered.

"Come with me," the donkey stated, and Chauncey obeyed without question.

The cheetah quickly grabbed his jacket when he saw the donkey head outside. Chauncey saw it was snowing.

After walking for a while, they found themselves at a basketball court in the middle of downtown Oakey Oaks. The court was covered in snow, and icicles hung from every part of the basketball hoops.

"Why are we here coach?" the cheetah wondered.

"This is where I made my first ever three-pointer," Doug said.

Chauncey took that into thought for a moment. Then he remembered something.

"Me too. I used to live about seven hours from here, but I made my first ever three-pointer on this particular hoop," he explained, pointing to the hoop farthest from them.

"Are you serious?" Doug wondered, astonished.

"Yeah. I was just a little kid back then. Five years old I think," Chauncey said.

"Hmmm…I didn't make a three-pointer until I was nine," the donkey said.

They both smiled at each other as the snow continued to fall lightly and elegantly.

Just then Chauncey looked above him and saw a huge snowflake falling toward them. Moving to where it would land, the cheetah carefully caught it, and showed it to Doug.

"Holy smokes! That is the largest snowflake I've ever seen! I wonder if it's bigger than a basketball," he wondered, reaching into his gym bag and pulling out a basketball. Chauncey gently moved the snowflake over the ball, and measured it.

"Must be about thirteen inches. Pretty big snowflake," Doug said.

"Yeah, but the biggest ever was fifteen inches in Montana, I think," Chauncey replied.

"Probably was very cold that day," Doug stated.

The cheetah nodded in agreement.

"Are there any other things about basketball you would like to talk about?" the cheetah asked.

Doug Donkey nodded and smiled. He subsequently began explaining his story about basketball and what led him to becoming a coach.