My Shot

by Elena Delle Donne

  Swoosh! The ball went through the basket, and regulation time ended. We entered extra time, then won the game. Later we went on to win the national title—something that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made those two free throws.

  That was a lot of pressure for someone who wasn’t yet a teenager, right? While the stress of making free throws—especially when a game was on the line—didn’t let off as the years went by, I luckily learned some skills that made the process easier. When I was in eighth grade, my varsity coach, Steve Johnson, taught me a surefire method for making a successful free throw.

  “Three dribbles, then lift your arm into an L shape,” he said. “Right after that, lift higher and flick the ball. Do this again and again, exactly the same way, and soon you’ll be perfect.”

  I messed up a lot at first because it’s not a very smooth free throw, but I stuck with the technique. Soon, every single time, I’d make the shot.

  I quickly became one of the best free throw shooters in Delaware, and by the time my sophomore season rolled around, I was about to reach the top in the US, too.

  In 2005 the national high school record for consecutive free throws made by a female player was seventy, and it had been set in 2002 by a girl from Indiana. When I was a sophomore, Ursuline was attending what every girls basketball team in the country considered to be the most important and elite basketball tournament all year: the Nike Tournament of Champions, which was always held in Phoenix.

  I’d attended the Nike event the year before, but not under the circumstances I would in 2005. After all, the pressure on me had reached a boiling point, and not just because my coaches, teammates, and fans were depending on me to help us win the tournament. It was because I was just a few free throws away from breaking the national free throw record.

  Get it over with, I told myself. Then you won’t feel so stressed anymore.

  As always, I was double- and triple-teamed throughout every single game. I was famous for making great shots from right near—and outside—the three-point line, so coaches for opposing teams never hesitated to send two, three, or even four of their biggest players to crowd around me. But when you’re 6'5" and tower over the best high school basketball players in the country, your opponents know that guarding isn’t enough. They understand that they can’t just play defense. They had to commit fouls and hope for the best when I headed to the free throw line.

  The problem was that I rarely—if ever—missed. And during the Nike tournament, when the best teams in the country were facing each other, it was no different.

  We were playing a team we knew we would beat, but they were still putting up a great effort. As we neared the end of the half, I was fouled by one of my opponents, which sent me to the line for two shots. In most games when a player goes up for a free throw, fans of the opposing team will stand in the section facing the goal, wave their arms, yell, and whistle, in an attempt to distract the player. This time, however, the fans were almost silent. They knew what I knew: that if I scored both points, I’d officially break the high school free throw record.

  I stepped up to the line and did just what I’d done ten thousand times before. I closed my eyes, then opened them and looked down at the ball in my hands. I turned them up toward the basket. Three dribbles. L shape. Lift, and flick.

  Swoosh. As the ball passed through the net, the crowd started to clap and cheer. “One more, Elena!” they screamed. Then they grew quiet once again.

  My heart was pounding, and for a split second I was certain that my hands were going to get so sweaty that the ball would slip from them and roll away. Just do what you’ve always done, I told myself. This is no big deal. Three dribbles. L shape. Lift, and flick.

  I watched the ball sail out of my hands, and then I closed my eyes. I wasn’t even sure I wanted it to go in. Would breaking the record make me happier? Would it help me like basketball? Or was I trying to make history to please everyone else and because that’s what I was supposed to do?

  “Elena!” I heard my teammates scream my name as the crowd went wild. I opened my eyes and looked at the basket. The ball had passed through, and the net was just barely swinging. The ball bounced into a referee’s hands, and my team surrounded me, hugging me tight.

  I didn’t feel like celebrating. I wasn’t even happy. I just wanted to run home as fast as I could and sit quietly next to Lizzie, holding her hands and feeling a million miles away from the roar of the crowd.

  • • •

  Everyone had told me to expect the press to start calling after I broke the high school free throw record. And I knew without being told that college coaches would show up in droves at my games, then offer me scholarships. But I had no idea that at each game for the rest of my sophomore season I’d feel more and more pressure because everyone wanted to see my foul shot streak continue. No one—from my parents to my friends to the moms and dads who’d show up to cheer on an opposing team—wanted to see me miss.

  My streak climbed through the seventies, all the way up to eighty. Making the shots felt so effortless, and I worried that if I missed, people would assume I’d been trying to. I can’t let them down, I thought. Everyone wants to see my record keep going higher.

  But it couldn’t do that forever.

  When I went to the line during one game late in my sophomore season to attempt my eighty-first consecutive free throw, I repeated every step I’d made—the exact same way—since my coach had first shown me how. Except, after this shot, the ball hit the rim and fell to the side. It landed in a mass of girls who were trying to rebound it, and I felt a strange sensation wash over me.

  I’m relieved, I thought. I’m actually relaxed because the pressure is off.

  For the first time in my life, making a mistake didn’t seem to me like a character flaw or a terrible thing that had happened because I hadn’t worked hard enough. Instead it gave me a break. It signaled that I was just as human as any other high school kid. And maybe, just maybe, I could make it one more day, week, or year before I finally burned out for good.

  Chapter Five

  Time Off

  The end of my sophomore season was just as dramatic as the middle had been. In the state championship game against our biggest rival, St. Elizabeth High School—whom Ursuline had lost to in a devastating defeat earlier that year—I scored a record-high fifty points, leading my team to a 68–51 victory. Yep, you read that right. I scored fifty points, and the other team scored only one more point than that.

  That year I averaged 28.5 points a game, and I maintained a 95 percent average for free throws.

  How can I quit now, when I’m better than I’ve ever been? I thought. Leaving wasn’t something I could seriously consider, especially because at the start of my junior year, Ursuline welcomed a new coach named Fran Burbidge, who came to us after coaching college teams throughout his entire career. He knew we had won three state championships, and I think he realized that coaching a team as good as Ursuline was a step up. With nationally ranked college coaches coming to see me play, he’d be in the national spotlight in a way he’d never been before.

  As a junior, I trained and played as hard as I ever had, yet my results were almost as good as they’d been during my sophomore year. Instead of averaging 28.5 points a game, I was at 28.3. And instead of making 95 percent of my free throws, I made 89 percent. Worst of all, the Raiders finished the year losing the state championship to St. Elizabeth, whom we’d stomped all over the year before. I was feeling like I might be at the end of my rope, but I couldn’t give up. I just couldn’t. People needed me.

  In fact, crowds had started to show up at games and tournaments to get my autograph and have their photos taken with me. At one game against a team from Pennsylvania, we had to delay the start for twenty minutes so we could let in a line of people who wanted to see me. Oftentimes I’d have to stay forty-five minutes or more after games so I could greet fans and talk to the young girls and boys who wanted to get their pictures taken with me. If I gave
it all up, wouldn’t I be crushing their dreams too?

  Finally, toward the end of my junior year, I decided it didn’t matter.

  If I don’t take a break soon, I realized, I’m going to burn out and give up basketball for good.

  The only looming issue was that I was almost positive I was going to be chosen for the USA Women’s U19 World Cup Team, which was basically a fast track to the Olympics. I’d dreamed my whole life of competing in the Olympics, winning the gold, and standing with my hand over my heart while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played over the loudspeaker. I’d imagined tears running down my face, then pictured myself looking into the crowds to see my family crying too. If I said no to the U19 team, would I lose my shot at the Olympics forever? I decided to ask my dad for advice.

  “Dad,” I said, “I think I need a break. But if I put basketball on hold, will people forget I exist? Am I going to ruin my future?”

  Dad was understanding but totally honest.

  “Elena,” he said, “I get it, but this could very well make USA Basketball not want to work with you ever again. So if you’re serious that you feel this way—and I think you are—you need to go about it the right way. Call Carol Callan and talk with her.”

  Carol Callan was—and still is—the Women’s National Team Director for USA Basketball, the governing body for men’s and women’s basketball. The idea of me—a teenager—ringing her up was like me calling the president, and I couldn’t imagine that she’d give me the time of day. Much to my surprise, though, she did hear me out. She also understood where I was coming from.

  “I’m shocked,” she said at first. “But you have to be true to yourself. If you need rest, then that’s the best step for your career. I’m just sorry you won’t be competing with us.”

  I hated letting her, the team, and my country down, so it wasn’t an easy choice to make. But I still decided I’d take the summer off. After the basketball season ended, I’d stop practicing and training after hours with John. I’d quit traveling to out-of-town tournaments on the weekends, and I’d politely decline to meet with recruiters and college coaches. Finally, I’d make it clear to the media and my fans that I was stepping out of the spotlight, only for a little bit.

  “I promise I’ll be back next season,” I told Fran and my other coaches, “but I just need to take this summer for myself.”

  That was only partially true. I also wanted to give the summer to Lizzie. Gene had gone to college—to Duke first, then to Middle Tennessee State University to play football as a tight end—and it was just me and Lizzie at home. My senior year would be my last with her, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before I left home.

  I also knew I’d become a role model to young girls and boys, and I wanted to show them that taking time away from the basketball court didn’t mean I was going to be selfish. I wasn’t just going to work on my tan all summer or party with my friends every night. I was going to volunteer at the Meadowood Program at Forest Oak Elementary School in Newark, Delaware, a place where Lizzie had spent a lot of time. I’d always believed that volunteering was important, and, in my mind, nobody needed time and attention more than Lizzie and people like her.

  I worked with a woman named Connie Poultney, who had taught Lizzie for years, and I spent the summer taking the kids in the program on walks in the park. I taught them basic skills like writing or telling time, and I even broke my promise that I’d step away from basketball, when I shot hoops with them some afternoons. Most of these special children were kindergarten-aged, so they had no idea who I was on the court. But they all knew me as Lizzie’s sister. And that, more than basketball stardom, was the best feeling in the world.

  I’d always suspected I needed to find my mission in life outside of basketball, and that summer I think I did. I told my mom about it one day after coming home from Meadowood.

  “When I go to college,” I said, “I don’t want it all to be about basketball.”

  “You shouldn’t,” Mom said. “There’s a lot more to life than basketball. But what are you thinking of?”

  I paused for a minute and got really serious. “I want to major in special education.” Mom had taught special ed even before she’d had Lizzie, so she smiled right away. “This summer has shown me that I know how to connect with people with special needs. Too many people turn away from kids like Lizzie because they’re scared, but I identify with them. I was born different just like them. I don’t look like other people, and neither do they. I get them, Mom.”

  As the summer before my senior year in high school wrapped up, I felt more optimistic than I ever had in my life. I thought I’d screwed my head back on, and because of that, I assumed I could face basketball again.

  I’ve got the rest of my life in front of me, I thought. I’ve got basketball, a passion outside of it, my health, and a family I love. I’m not going to burn out, I just know it.

  Little did I know that the next year, in all respects, would be the most up-and-down of my whole life.

  Chapter Six

  Senior Year

  When I stepped out onto the basketball court at the beginning of my senior year, I told myself I was ready. This season Ursuline would reclaim the state championship title. This year I’d decide which college scholarship to take. And this year I’d find my passion for the sport again. After all, if I’d taken the summer off and still decided to lace up my shoes and pick up a ball when the summer was over, didn’t that mean I’d liked playing at least a little bit?

  Almost immediately I realized I’d been deceiving myself. I thought, The truth is I just missed my teammates. I came back because I don’t want to let them down.

  Because of that, I forged ahead. I started training again with John, and I practiced one-on-one with my dad and anyone else who would play with me. Fran and I discussed a workout schedule in preparation for the season, which would start in the late fall, and I began to carefully consider my college options with my parents. I was leaning toward the University of Connecticut, which had the best team in the country, but I also liked the University of Tennessee, whose legendary coach, Pat Summitt, had been so kind to me when she’d watched one of my games the year before. Villanova and Middle Tennessee State University were also at the top of my list. Duke had offered me a scholarship, as had UNC years before, but I’d decided not to go to either of them.

  That fall I encountered a situation I hadn’t been expecting.

  I was leaving class one day, heading toward my locker to pack up my stuff and go home, when the captain of the varsity volleyball team approached me.

  “Have you ever played volleyball?” she asked.

  I had to think for a little bit. “Um, I think I did at camp. And when we go to the beach in the summer, sometimes I play there. Why?”

  “Because we have an injured player,” she said. “She can’t play in the next game, and we thought maybe you could fill in for her near the net because you’re so tall.”

  I’d never even considered playing volleyball. I was all about basketball, all the time, and a big part of me worried that if I focused on anything else—even for one game—I might fall out of my groove.

  I decided to talk to Fran about it, and he wasn’t concerned. As long as I dedicated myself to basketball when practices started, he didn’t see how someone who worked as hard as I did would suffer for trying something new.

  I played one volleyball game, and I loved it. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I went back for one more game, then another. During practice I never felt pressured to be the best, and during games I never worried that the whole team was depending on me alone.

  For the first time in forever, I thought, I’m having fun.

  I was enjoying volleyball in a pure way, untainted by stress or fear of letting anyone down. I just liked the way it made my body feel. My heart soared when I spiked the ball or tapped it lightly to a teammate, who’d then knock it over the net. There was a simplicity to volleyball that didn’t happen on th
e basketball court—less running back and forth, more immediate gratification, and shots that happened in quicker succession. The game moved so quickly that I didn’t have time to do anything but focus on getting the ball over the net, away from the ground, or to a teammate.

  Plus, volleyball didn’t have any of the baggage that basketball did. I could be anyone I wanted to be on the volleyball court. There were no looming scholarship offers, no Olympic dreams, and no state championship title to bring back home.

  Even though I was a total newbie, I was a great player. By the end of the season, our team was almost undefeated, and much to everyone’s surprise, I helped lead them to the state championships. Like the varsity basketball team, we were hoping to avenge a loss from the previous year, when we’d been defending our title.

  The pressure I felt before the final game was so different from what I felt playing basketball, though. If we won the title, I’d be thrilled, but if we lost, I wouldn’t feel crushed. I’d just know we’d played our hardest, and a loss wouldn’t be a personal failure.

  During the championship, I played with more heart than I ever had in my life—and had more fun doing it. I had sixteen kills and six blocks, and Ursuline won! We finished the season with a 22–2 record.

  Unfortunately, the high I was feeling about volleyball quickly ended when basketball season went into full swing. It wasn’t just because I was training so hard, though. It was because I’d formally accepted a scholarship from the UConn Huskies. I’d be going to Storrs, Connecticut, for college, playing on the best women’s college team in the nation, and I realized I was about to throw myself 150 percent into a future I wasn’t sure I wanted. I was faking my commitment, even when I signed on the dotted line. But how could I have said no? Someone as good as Elena Delle Donne was expected to go all the way, and that started at a place like UConn.

  My heart was suffering, and my health was too. Starting just after Thanksgiving, I’d suddenly begun moving more slowly than I usually did during practice. When I woke up in the mornings, I couldn’t go running, but it was because I wasn’t physically able to get out of bed, not because I wanted to sleep in. I’d begun dozing off in class, I ran a low-grade fever for days, and I had aches and pains all over my body on and off all day.