THE LAST DANCE

I've been training all of your life for this. After all of my long hours of hard work, I am ready for my last hurrah; my very last chance to leave my legacy. This will be my final chance to prove myself.

This is what Brian was thinking on the bus, stuck in deep thought. His team was on their way to the State Championship game; the round he had been training for all his life. For Brian, and his teammates, this was their ultimatum. This was the end of their basketball careers. This was the last dance.

The rest of his teammates had their headphones on, jamming to tunes. Brian was stuck in the overwhelming realization that his basketball career would come to an end today, no matter what. Win or lose, it wouldn't matter. However, this kept stirring in his head and he got the chills as he was thinking of how he wanted to win the State Championship. A few months ago it seemed like an impossible dream. Now it was within arm's reach.

Still, Brian couldn't believe that the long journey he had started with his friends back in the third grade was coming to its conclusion. He couldn't accept how fast it had truly gone by. Pretty soon he would have to go out and get a job and go to college. It was a daunting prospect. It intimidated him. As they got closer and closer the arena he just kept thinking to himself, what legacy do I want to leave?

For all of his life people had doubted him. They had laughed at him. They had told him that he couldn't win a State Championship. They had told him that he could never accomplish his dreams. But now that he was here, on brisk of turning his magic dream into a reality, he realized was that all it needed to succeed was to have one person who believed in him. That person was himself. He told himself that no matter what people said he could do or could not do, he would find a way to accomplish it. Brian simply believed that he could find a way to do it. He could find a way to win the State Championship. He wanted to prove the doubters wrong.

The bus pulled up behind the arena. The butterflies began to churn in his stomach even worse than before. But now he was not going into the game nervous. Brian was going in on a mission. That goal was to make his dream that he had worked so hard for all of his life a reality. He had to make sure that his last dance would leave an incredible legacy.