My Shot

by Elena Delle Donne

  “Geno,” she said. “Stop. She’s not going back to UConn. Leave her alone.”

  Coach Auriemma and I sat in stunned silence for a minute. When I finally looked up, I could see the expression on his face, and it was the last thing I’d ever expected.

  He’s sad, I thought. Not angry and not shocked. He’s just sad.

  But there was nothing I could do. Finally, after so many years and so much blood, sweat, and tears, I’d promised to look out for myself.

  • • •

  The problem was, though, that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after the summer ended. Sure, I’d decided I wasn’t going back to UConn, but where would I go instead? And what would I do? Should I take more time off? And if I wasn’t going to play basketball, then how would I spend all the hours I’d have on my hands?

  When we got back from the beach, I started taking a lot of long walks. Like I said, my parents’ house was spread across thirty-five acres, and there were few things I liked more than to wake up early in the morning and head out into the woods. My beloved Great Dane, Champ, had died three days after I’d come home from Connecticut, and it broke my heart not to be with him. Even though every step reminded me of him, I was starting to manage. On those beautiful, long walks, I wasn’t worrying about what was next. I was just trying to enjoy myself.

  Be in the moment, I told myself. Because in the moment there’s no pressure.

  One morning just after dawn, I was navigating my way through some tall trees, watching the sunlight peek between the green leaves that almost entirely covered the sky. As I looked up, a ray broke through and made me squint. Suddenly a thought hit me.

  I’ll go to school nearby, at the University of Delaware. I’m not going to play basketball either. I’m going to join the volleyball team and have fun playing a sport I really, truly love. A sport that’s actually fun, with no expectations.

  I almost jumped for joy, realizing that I knew what I was going to do for the next four years. I was going to live and play on my own terms rather than because I thought it was what people wanted me to do. I was going to choose my own path rather than the one that was expected of me. And I’d be close to Lizzie. I could see her every day if I wanted to!

  I started to jog back toward my house. Then I stopped suddenly, feeling nauseated.

  I’m fine. I was probably just looking at the sun too long. Or maybe I’m still just tired.

  I had no idea how very wrong I was. Those blissful walks in the woods that summer had already changed my life forever.

  Chapter Nine

  Lyme Disease

  A few days after that first bout of nausea, I started to feel sick in a way I never had before.

  “Mom,” I said one morning when I stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast, “I feel like I have the flu. I’m exhausted, and my joints are killing me, but I don’t have a fever. This is weird.”

  Mom took my temperature, and sure enough, it came in right at 98.6. Perfectly normal.

  “Let’s keep an eye on things,” she said. “Maybe you’re just worn out, so get some rest, and if it gets worse, we’ll go to the doctor.”

  I stayed inside all day, barely ate anything, crawled into bed early that night, and woke up at dawn with the worst pain I’ve felt in my life. The achiness wasn’t just in my joints, though; my head was throbbing on one side, and the light that was starting to pour in through my bedroom blinds made me feel like I was going to throw up. But instead of running to the bathroom, all I could manage to do was lie still, breathing as slowly and steadily as I could so that I could keep the nausea at bay. As my head throbbed, I drifted into a fitful sleep, and about an hour or so later my mom peeked her head in the door.

  “Elena,” she asked, “are you up?”

  I couldn’t even lift my head up as I squinted at her and started talking. “I feel awful. I think I have a migraine. Can we go to the doctor?”

  “Of course,” she said, “You should try to eat something first, though. I’ll call the doctor, and we’ll go see him after we drop Lizzie off.”

  Mom had fixed a beautiful breakfast, like she always did, but I couldn’t even look at it. While she made me an emergency appointment and helped Lizzie into the car, I walked to the couch, lay down, and closed my eyes. I waited for her in silence. Then she came back, led me out the door, and seated me inside the car with Lizzie. After we left Lizzie at school, we pulled into the doctor’s office parking lot, and I felt like it took me ten minutes to make it into the building.

  “What’s going on?” the doctor asked as I was sitting on the exam table.

  I spelled out the whole list of strange symptoms I was having. He took my temperature, checked my pulse, looked inside my throat, felt the glands in my neck, and did all the normal things that doctors usually do when they’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with their patient. Then he looked at me, seriously, and started talking again.

  “I can’t really see anything that’s unusual. You don’t have a temperature, so it doesn’t appear to be an infection. Have you come into contact with anyone who’s been sick lately? Or has anything else happened?”

  I thought for a minute. “Um, nothing much. I’ve been with my family since I left UConn, so I haven’t seen that many people. I’ve been taking lots of walks in the woods mostly. I’ve just been so stressed out, so I’m trying to take it easy.”

  My doctor paused for a second in concentration. “Have you noticed any strange marks on your skin?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “Why?”

  “No reason. Let’s run some tests. I don’t think this is the flu or mono, so I want to rule out anything that’s more serious.”

  I went home and straight back to bed. A day or so later my doctor called and told me that the results had come back.

  “You tested positive for Lyme disease,” he said. “You need to start taking antibiotics immediately.”

  Those of you who live in the suburbs or the country, where there are lots of deer around, might have heard of Lyme disease. A lot of people who spend most of their time in cities haven’t. Even though I lived with woods all around me, though, it wasn’t something anyone I knew had come down with. Maybe I’d heard about Lyme disease on the news, or from a friend of a friend, but it had never affected my life directly.

  That all changed in the summer of 2008.

  Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that’s carried by deer ticks. Even though I’d never found a tick on me, I must have been bitten by one at some point during one of my walks, and it then transmitted the disease into my body. Usually a tick has to be attached to you for a day or two for the infection to begin. In my case, I have no idea how long I’d had the tick, but it was definitely enough time for me to get sick.

  The clearest sign that someone has Lyme disease is a bull’s-eye rash at the site of the bite. Literally it looks like someone tattooed a bull’s-eye right on your skin. I didn’t have that, so it’s a good thing my doctor had decided to run tests. Otherwise he might have misdiagnosed me with the flu or mono, which is what happens to a lot of people. Those people then don’t get the medication they need fast enough, and the infection spreads. They start to feel worse, and as the bacteria stays in their body, their joint pain, stiffness, migraines, or exhaustion lasts longer. They may even suffer nerve damage that affects them for the rest of their lives.

  Luckily, I wasn’t one of those people—or so I thought at first. I took the antibiotics my doctor prescribed for almost three weeks, and I felt better immediately. My migraines went away, my body stopped aching, and soon I was ready to face my first day as a freshman at the University of Delaware.

  • • •

  If there was anything the University of Delaware was known for, it wasn’t basketball, but that was just fine with me. Campus was in a town called Newark, which was only thirty minutes from my parents and Lizzie, but it was light-years away from my burnout. I knew it would be the perfect place to start a new chapter of my life.
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  I could have lived at home if I’d wanted to, but I decided to move into a dorm, like what I thought a normal college student would do. I dreamed of being a regular girl for the next four years, with no six a.m. training sessions, no weekends away booked months in advance, and nothing to worry about except where to study or what club to join. All I wanted was to blend right in with everyone else.

  Who was I kidding? I was pretty much the most famous person on campus from day one. Random strangers would give me sympathetic looks on the way to class, and I could see people whispering when I walked outside my dorm. I knew I was easy to spot because I was the tallest girl in the whole school, but it still made me sad. People thought I’d dropped out of UConn because I was pregnant, on drugs, or had had some kind of massive mental breakdown, and I wished more than anything else that they’d just forget me and move on.

  I knew I couldn’t control what anyone thought of me, so I chose to just shrug it off. I guess being the juiciest gossip in the dining hall is better than being miserable twenty-four hours a day, I reassured myself.

  I still loved school from moment one. UD was welcoming and comfortable, full of people who loved the state of Delaware just as much as I did. My mom had gone there, so it felt like a part of my history—a legacy that I could grow into—and maybe I could become as wonderful and accomplished as my mom. I saw familiar faces from preschool, high school, YMCA youth league, and more. I could go home on the weekends to do my laundry and have dinner with my family, and if I was missing Lizzie, I could hop into my car and be by her side in no time at all. I was living day to day for myself, making no big plans for the future, and for the first time in ages, I was actually feeling relaxed.

  But sports are a huge part of who I am, and, luckily, I’d realized that the moment I’d decided to go to Delaware. At the end of the summer, I’d asked UConn to release me from my scholarship so I could play varsity sports at another school, and they’d agreed. On the morning that the women’s volleyball team opened up their roster to walk-ons, I was the first person in line to try out.

  I made the team. I was officially a fighting Blue Hen!

  Chapter Ten

  Volleyball

  Even though the University of Delaware women’s volleyball team didn’t exactly draw big crowds—there were maybe 750 fans at our home opener—the team was nothing to laugh at. They’d finished the 2007 season with a 31–5 record, had won the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) title, and had made it to the NCAA women’s volleyball tournament for the first time in their history. They’d won in the first round, in fact. Coach Bonnie Kenny had been with the team for seven seasons, and she was building up a great program, with enthusiastic players, proven results, and a togetherness the likes of which I hadn’t encountered in years. Plus, when I found out that I’d made the team, she greeted me like I was a part of her family, calling my parents to see if there was anything special she or her staff could do for me. Knowing I’d probably get a hundred calls from the media, Coach Kenny held a press conference for me so that I could speak for myself, on my own terms. I was smiling from ear to ear as I answered reporters’ questions.

  Once volleyball season started, I’d be competing for a spot as a middle hitter. Having to vie for a position was totally new to me because I’d always been a starter on every team—in every sport. But even if I had to warm the bench for a few games, I didn’t care. I was having fun! There was no pressure to be the best person on the team. On the basketball court, I’d been so good—and so tough on myself—that I’d made each practice and game a battle of me versus me. That didn’t happen with volleyball. All that mattered was that I played hard with my team.

  I also knew I wasn’t expected to hold the whole team together. When I was called off the bench, my job was to be on the front line and never leave it. In basketball I’d been the offense, defense, rebounder, lead field goal shooter, and star of the three-point shot. In volleyball I could play one position really well, and that would help my team—all of us together—win matches.

  And win we did.

  We finished the season 19–16, captured the CAA championship for a second straight year, and received our second NCAA tournament bid.

  I can’t believe I’m at the NCAA tournament for volleyball rather than basketball, I remember thinking. Never in a million years would I have expected that! But was I full of regret, dreaming longingly of basketball glory? Not at all. When I look at photos of myself during that tournament, I see that I have the biggest smile on my face because I was having a blast. We were the underdogs, not expected to advance to the second round. When we lost in the first round, we accepted it. We weren’t disappointed, because we’d had a brilliant season.

  For the first time in my whole life, no one said anything to me about basketball either. When I went home on Sundays for dinner, my parents steered clear of the subject. My classmates were so excited about the volleyball team doing well that they talked to me about volleyball, not basketball.

  Even the UD women’s basketball head coach, Tina Martin, gave me a comfortable distance. She never called me, and she told her assistant coaches not to either. Once, I passed her in a hall near the gym, and all she did was nod and politely say, “Hello.” I ran into varsity basketball players every now and then, but they talked to me about classes or my volleyball matches, never about basketball. I later found out that Coach Martin had given them instructions to avoid the subject of basketball completely with me.

  I kept thinking about something that had happened to me during the summer, though. One day after I’d returned home from Storrs, when I was forcing any thoughts about basketball out of my mind, I’d decided to pick Lizzie up at the Mary Campbell Center. I knew most of Lizzie’s classmates and teachers, and as I left my car and walked toward the center’s entrance, I was approached by a woman with a familiar face. It was a woman in a wheelchair named Dawn, who had cerebral palsy just like Lizzie.

  “Elena?” she asked tentatively.

  “Oh, hi, Dawn!” I said to reassure her. We’d only spoken a few times, but there was no reason for her to be shy.

  “I just wanted to say that I’m a huge basketball fan.”

  I tried not to, but I couldn’t help cringing inside. I hated the thought of disappointing anyone—especially Dawn.

  Luckily, being upset with me was the last thing on her mind, which I discovered when she kept talking.

  “I know you’re not playing anymore, but I just want you to know how much I still look up to you. And I hope you didn’t quit because you think you’re not good enough. You are, and you should do everything you can with your abilities, just like we do.”

  I was stunned. So not only is she not disappointed in me, I thought, but she’s worried that I’m disappointed in myself!

  The honest truth was that I wasn’t frustrated with my decision, but part of what Dawn said still nagged at me. She respected me as a basketball player, not a volleyball player. I knew volleyball was fun, but it wasn’t totally fulfilling me. It wasn’t me.

  When young girls had approached me after volleyball games or out in public and asked for autographs, I’d always signed them Elena Delle Donne, #11. That was my basketball number, not my volleyball number! I wasn’t sure if I did that because that was how I was known to the world, or because that was how I saw myself.

  All I knew was that there were so many things I really missed about basketball. I loved how much it challenged me physically and mentally, and how it kept me on my toes—constantly. I just wasn’t someone who needed to kick back all the time. Sure, I knew I had to have fun in my life, but wasn’t there room for something that would really push me forward?

  I can’t believe it, I said to myself, but I want to think about playing basketball again. Then the strangest thought hit me. Maybe I’m not as burned out as I thought?

  It took me a long time to realize it, but one of the amazing things about burning out is that it doesn’t have to signal the end of something—even though you
might think that when you’re totally falling apart. Feeling drop-dead exhausted or hating even the slightest thought of something might just mean that you need to break up with it, then get back together when the time’s right. Sure, I’d taken a little vacation from playing the summer after my junior year of high school, but maybe that hadn’t been enough? Maybe, as the saying goes, true love is meant to be if you say good-bye to something, and then it comes back to you?

  I wasn’t ready to make a decision just yet, so I gave myself some time to think about it.

  UD isn’t a huge sports school, so a lot of the varsity athletes ran in the same circles, and many of them were my friends. I’d grown close to a basketball player named Meghan McLean, and one night during the winter of my freshman year, I approached her.

  “Meghan?” I asked with just the tiniest bit of hesitation. “Do you want to shoot some hoops tonight?”

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by her reaction, but I was. She looked at me with her mouth wide open, then didn’t say a word.

  “I mean, I’m not making any commitments,” I continued, “but I miss being on the court. I think. I just want to see what it feels like to get some shots up with someone.”

  Meghan finally nodded her head, and that night we met at the Bob Carpenter Center, the five-thousand-seat arena on campus. “The Bob,” as everyone calls it, is home to the volleyball and basketball teams, so I’d been there a million times. Someone used to the huge ten-thousand-seat stadiums at Duke or UConn might have joked that the Bob looked more like a high school stadium than something you’d find at a state university, but I always thought it was perfectly cozy. It wasn’t grand and intimidating. When I played at the Bob, I felt close to the crowd, like I was watching them as much as they were watching me.

  As Meghan fumbled in her gym bag that night, trying to find the keys to the arena, I felt the strangest sensation wash over me. I’m actually nervous about playing basketball, I thought. I’ve played for so long that I could make a basket in my sleep, but right now I feel like I’m about to go on a first date.