Years later, what stayed with her wasn’t the net snapping or the roar of the crowd, but the strange stillness before she let go. In that breath, she finally saw how small she’d been willing to make herself just to be easy to love. Mr. Ellis never called it bravery, never asked for thanks. He simply adjusted the world by a few inches, put the ball back where it belonged, and refused to leave. The court didn’t change her life; the scale of possibility did.
From then on, courage stopped looking like fireworks and started looking like presence. Showing up when no one was watching. Asking for the raise. Saying the hard thing. Sitting beside a hospital bed with nothing to offer but time. Whenever fear insisted she was asking for too much, she remembered that lowered rim and the quiet, unwavering proof that she wasn’t.
